{"id":22803,"date":"2012-04-30T00:10:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T00:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22803"},"modified":"2012-04-30T00:10:03","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T00:10:03","slug":"lawrence-powell-delivers-a-gripping-history-of-new-orleans-in-accidental-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22803","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence Powell delivers a gripping history of New Orleans in ‘Accidental City’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Powell delivers a gripping history of New Orleans in ‘Accidental City’<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/a>
\n2012-04-02<\/p>\n

Chris Waddington<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

At first, I was disappointed to hear that Lawrence Powell\u2019s<\/a> history of the Crescent City<\/a> ended with the Battle of New Orleans<\/a>. I wanted the Tulane University scholar to bring me a little closer to the present.<\/p>\n

My opinion changed a few pages into \u201cThe Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans<\/a>.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nPowell\u2019s splendid time machine of a book swept me into a detailed account of the city\u2019s rise from swampy colonial outpost to strategic linchpin during the War of 1812<\/a>. Populated with vividly sketched characters, Powell\u2019s history fits individual actors into a coherent, geopolitical narrative that spans centuries and continents \u2014 no easy task when your cast includes Enlightenment scientists, loud-mouthed market women, French-Canadian voyageurs, Ursuline nuns, slave artisans and Gen. Andrew Jackson<\/a> hoisted on the shoulders of cheering Baratarians…<\/p>\n

…The birth of a distinctive Creole society wasn\u2019t fast or tidy. Powell writes about free people of color who owned slaves. He writes about back-of-town bars where people of all races mixed. He describes how Ursuline<\/a> nuns recruited the wives of slaveholders to serve as godparents for their baptized chattels \u2014 in opposition to prevailing law. He writes about brutally suppressed slave revolts \u2014 and the free manumission of black concubines and their mixed-race offspring. He catches all the high and low notes as New Orleanians improvised an American future \u2014 and he makes it clear that America would be a very different place without the city\u2019s contributions.<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Powell delivers a gripping history of New Orleans in ‘Accidental City’ New Orleans Times-Picayune 2012-04-02 Chris Waddington At first, I was disappointed to hear that Lawrence Powell\u2019s history of the Crescent City ended with the Battle of New Orleans. I wanted the Tulane University scholar to bring me a little closer to the present. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,369,8,20],"tags":[10572,10569,10570,1438,6483],"class_list":["post-22803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-chris-waddington","tag-lawrence-n-powell","tag-lawrence-powell","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-orleans-times-picayune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}