FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Snippets are fragments of things. They are people observed, foods consumed, ornaments spotted: a man on a streetcar, crawfish shells on the sidewalk, an ornate cornstalk-shaped fence. I believe that to immerse oneself in a place means to try and hold all its elements, past and present, grandiose and mundane, in a single plane of vision. This is, of course, impossible. The result is fragments, vignettes. In Jackson Square, for example: a vision of the first French settlers coming up the Mississippi alongside the sight of a garishly painted street performer harassing passers-by. If we cannot hold all facets of a place in our mind at once, I think the next best thing is to honor our fragmented understanding, to see in "Snippets." I learned and re-learned a lot of things making this book. I learned that even in my "home" in Louisiana I feel I am an outsider peering into a window. I re-learned how beautiful and bizarre New Orleans is, how every street has a distinct personality. . . . I re-learned that I know very little about anything, and that the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. I learned that asking for entry into people's personal lives is complicated and requires a lot of mental and ethical somersaults. This book is my most earnest and honest reflection of New Orleans: triumphant and tragic, gaudy and gritty, elegant and ugly, rich and poor, a city that embodies all these and other polar opposites with a perverse kind of grace. My account is flawed and incomplete in the way all our experiences are flawed and incomplete: there are always vistas left to see, flavors left to try, stories left to hear; there are assumptions made, words misunderstood, histories distorted. May this book communicate the New Orleans I know, and may you weave your own New Orleans truth between the pages. - Emma Fick

Sothern, a death penalty lawyer who with his wife, photographer Nikki Page, arrived in New Orleans four years ahead of Katrina, delivers a haunting, personal, and quintessentially American story.

An illustrated travelogue that brilliantly captures artist and illustrator Emma Fick’s epic train journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway—from Beijing through Mongolia to Moscow—including more than 200 watercolor illustrations and handwritten text that includes cultural and historical information as well as invaluable travel tips. In May 2015, on a trip through the Baltics and Scandinavia, artist and illustrator Emma Fick and her boyfriend (now husband) Helvio discovered a worn copy of the Trans-Siberian Handbook at a secondhand shop in Helsinki. Many travelers from around the globe had used the guide to journey on the longest train ride in the world. Emma and Helvio took their find as a sign to embark on their own adventure on the legendary railway that has captured the imaginations and curiosities of many travelers and explorers since its construction a century ago. A year and a half later, with Trans-Siberian Handbook in hand, they boarded the train in Beijing. Their odyssey was just beginning. Border Crossings is the chronicle of their unforgettable 26-day, 8-city journey across Asia to Moscow. Emma offers a concise history of the railway and in vivid, visual language, takes you across a vast landscape of rural villages and bustling urban centers, through open food markets brimming with delicacies and a snowy mountain wilderness dotted with clusters of gers—nomadic homes. Emma’s detailed observations and lush descriptions, accompanied by detailed colorful illustrations, bring this remarkable journey of discovery and adventure—the landscapes, food, people and cultures—to life. Experience drinking salty milk tea, eating shoe sole cake (fried cakes shaped like shoe soles piled high and topped with milk curds and hard candies), and riding camels in Mongolia. In Russia, wander through a snow-draped countryside filled with stands of birch trees, explore the wonders of freshwater Lake Baikal—the source of omul, a ubiquitous and beloved fish delicacy—go ice fishing, and take a self-guided tour of Moscow. With its hand-drawn maps, its wealth of illustrations of every aspect of the experience—from sleeping quarters on a train to the highlights of a monastery or the details of a memorable meal, Border Crossings is an invitation to experience new destinations and cultures first-hand—to travel the Trans-Siberian Railway as never before, whether you’re a nomad looking for a new vacation destination, an armchair traveler, or just culturally curious.

A searing anatomy of a New Orleans murder trial and a system of justice gone wrong. In a New Orleans supermarket parking lot in the fall of 1984 ,two disparate lives become inextricably bound for the next fourteen years. The first, the life of Delores Dye, a white housewife and grandmother. The second, a young black man with a gun in hand. Moments following their maybe not so chance encounter, Mrs. Dye lay dead on the sunbaked macadam, and the killer had made off with her purse, her groceries, and her car. Four days later, following a tip, authorities arrested a known drug dealer and father of five named Curtis Kyles. Kyles would then be tried for Mrs. Dye's murder an unprecedented five times, though he maintained his innocence throughout each trial. Convicted and sentenced to death in his second trial, he would spend fourteen years on death row. After a fifth jury was unable to reach a verdict, New Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr., finally conceded defeat and dropped the murder charge. But the case slowly yielded a deeper drama: The crime turned out to have been the side effect of an intricately plotted act of revenge. That police and prosecutors may have been complicit in the vengeance that framed Kyles cuts to the heart of a system of justice for Southern blacks in the era since lynch mobs were shamed into obsolescence. A compellingly written legal drama that has at its heart passionate intrigue and justice gone awry. Desire Street is a 2006 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime.

For decades, patrons of the quaint Creole restaurant on Saint Peter Street have enjoyed the standards of New Orleans cuisine in one of its most natural settings. Around the corner from Saint Louis Cathedral, half a block from Jackson Square and within sight of the Mississippi River, the mural-walled dining room and tropical garden patio provide the backdrop for the gumbo, etouffée and jambalaya that flow from the kitchen. The word "gumbo" evokes images of black iron kettles, slowly simmering with a mélange of exotic ingredients, skillfully seasoned and crafted for pleasure. It also describes the New Orleans culture. In this book of recipes, peppered with vignettes of local lore, Gumbo Shop shares its culinary traditions for your enjoyment.

COULD YOU FIND A MUSEUM FOR A MONSTER? OR A JAZZ BAR FOR A JABBERWOCK? Zoe writes travel guides for the undead. And she's good at it too - her new-found ability to talk to cities seems to help. After the success of The Shambling Guide to New York City, Zoe and her team are sent to New Orleans to write the sequel, and to find the best beignet pastry in the city, of course. Her writing isn't all that brings her to New Orleans. The only person who can save Zoe's new boyfriend from zombism is rumoured to live in the city's swamps, but she's out of her element in the wilderness. With colleagues waiting to see her fail, and rumours of something hunting citytalkers, can Zoe stay alive long enough to finish her next book?

Kelley tells the colorful, entertaining, and often adventurous history of the Irish in New Orleans. From Bloody O'Reilly in the eighteenth century to the great churches and charitable organizations built by the Irish Famine immigrants in the nineteenth century to the Irish-dominated politics of the twentieth century, and including Irish dance, music, and sports, the author introduces readers to a hitherto untold story of one of America's most historical cities.

This book brings together all the surviving photographs--126 of the original 150--from the remarkable series entitled "La Nouvelle Orleans et ses environs, taken of New Orleans in 1867 by the city's most important photographer, Theodore Lilienthal. Representing the first municipally sponsored photographic survey of any american city, and only recently rediscovered, the photographs--of every aspect of the city, from urban palaces and stately mansions to factories and asylums--were exhibited at the Paris World Exposition in 1867, before being formally presented to Napoleon III, Emperor of France from 1852 to 1871. This book places the photographs in the context of contemporary photographic practice, nineteenth-century city building and urban iconography, and of the need for reconstruction and economic renewal in the South following the devastation of the American Civil War. lavishly produced and engagingly written, it will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the United States, the history of photography and the development of the modern city.