The first full-length book of drone photography of the Crescent City, Above New Orleans offers readers perspectives never before captured by a camera. Overhead scenes cover the entire metropolis, from the French Quarter to Uptown, from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, from Westwego to New Orleans East, and from Gentilly to Gretna. A detailed description accompanies each image, providing insight into the history, geography, and architecture of this dazzling municipality. As this volume demonstrates, the vantage points afforded by the drone-mounted camera reveal fascinating views otherwise unobtainable in the often compact environment of New Orleans. “To me a roofscape is the tout ensemble of urban elements,” writes Richard Campanella in the book’s preface, “particularly in dense neighborhoods, visible from a perch that is high enough to be synoptical, yet low enough to be intimate. Roofscapes are the intermediary between the more familiar concepts of streetscapes and landscapes; they are the oblique, three-dimensional renderings of cityscapes.” Capturing these views of New Orleans required the specialized equipment and expertise of retired Italian engineer Marco Rasi, who has mastered the new technology of drone photography in his adopted hometown. His adept piloting and keen eye made for, in Rasi’s words, “the perfect platform to capture those rooftop perspectives I had always savored, as no aircraft or helicopter could ever do.” Above New Orleans: Roofscapes of the Crescent City beautifully documents the aesthetic wonder of the city’s singular urban landscape.

In Over New Orleans, photographer David King Gleason creates a breathtaking aerial mosaic of the Crescent City—a composite portrait that is at once panoramic and intimate, dramatic and subtle. Working from the skies, Gleason reveals every aspect of the city from the familiar streetcars and wrought-iron balconies to less celebrated views of the Faubourg Marigny, the Dixie Brewery on Tulane Avenue, and the palatial residences that overlook Lake Pontchartrain. From high overhead, Gleason's camera captures the dynamism of the Central Business District and the broad sweep of the docks that lie along the great bend of the Mississippi. Closing in, he reveals the lush courtyards of the French Quarter and the great mansions of the Garden District. Mapping the city's environs, Gleason shows the turbid Mississippi where it meets the clear blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway leading off into the morning mist, and the cluster of chemical plants that have found their place on the river amid the swampland and graceful antebellum plantation homes. These photographs reveal the diverse urban fabric of New Orleans with a drama that can seldom be approached at street level. The narrow streets of the French Quarter give way to the bustle of Canal Street and the bluntly modern towers of Poydras Street; the Iberville Housing Project is revealed wedged in a netherworld between the Saint Louis No. 2 Cemetery and the sculptured terrain of Louis Armstrong Park; the Superdome sits at the hub of a network of highways; and the Mississippi, girded with shipping, is seen as the city's backbone—its presence felt in nearly every image. Cities are usually seen from above only fleetingly, from airplane windows, or partially, from the upper floors of tall buildings. In Over New Orleans, David King Gleason offers us the opportunity to linger above one of the world's most fascinating cities, to contrast its charms and raw vigor, to see it whole in all its complexity.

The exquisite antebellum mansions of the Garden District. Giant oaks stretching across boulevards and back in time to before the Civil War. The decadence of Bourbon Street. The vibrant sounds of jazz, blues, and Cajun music coming from every doorway or right from the street. Lacy iron balconies that wrap around the historic buildings of the French Quarter. A leisurely meal under a canopy of wisteria. In vibrant watercolors and detailed sketches, artist Diana Gessler captures the unique charm that makes New Orleans alluring: Mardi Gras, the Cabildo, Jackson Square, the Court of the Two Sisters, St. Louis Cemetery, the Jazz Festival, the River Road Plantations, the Cajun country, sumptuous Creole cuisine, and Audubon’s Aquarium of the Americas. In fascinating detail—on everything from the making of Mardi Gras, Napolean’s death mask, the city’s inspired architectural and garden designs, and favorite author hangouts to famous New Orleanians and Aunt Sally’s Creole pralines—Very New Orleans celebrates the city, the Cajun country, the people, and our history

Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture—jazz, cuisine, dance—while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourism websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. She describes how, with varying degrees of success, African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourism industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations. Taking readers from the Lower Ninth Ward to the White House, Thomas highlights the ways that popular culture and public policy converge to create a mythology of racial harmony that masks a long history of racial inequality and structural inequity.

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.

A memoir from the land planning and urban policy management authority, and sixth-generation member of an influential New Orleans family.

Tom Piazza's award-winning portrait of a city in crisis, with a new preface from the author, ten years after. Ten years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the disaster that followed, promises were made, forgotten, and renewed. What would become of New Orleans in the years ahead? How would this city and its people recover—and what meaning would its story have, for America and the world? In Why New Orleans Matters, first published only months after the disaster, award-winning author and longtime New Orleans resident Tom Piazza illuminates the storied culture and still-evolving future of this great and vital American metropolis. Piazza evokes the sensuous textures of the city that gave us jazz music, Creole cooking, and a unique style of living; he examines the city's undercurrents of corruption and racism, and explains how its people endure and transcend them. And, perhaps most important, he bears witness to the city's spirit: its grace and beauty, resilience and soul. In the preface to this new edition, Piazza considers how far the city has come in the decade since Katrina, as well as the challenges it still faces—and reminds us that people in threatened communities across America have much to learn from New Orleans' disaster and astonishing recovery.