This book is the perfect starting point for those who want to read their way through New Orleans, for it orchestrates all of the most important writing of five different parts of town, both historic and contemporary, as well as the recent writing of its flood-prone outskirts.

T. R. Johnson has taught at universities in Louisville and Boston and is now a Professor of English and Weiss Presidential Fellow at Tulane University. He has written books on Lacanian psychoanalysis, the teaching of writing, and prose style and is the editor of New Orleans: A Literary History. Since the late 1990s, he has lived in the 9th Ward of New Orleans near the Mississippi River and hosted a contemporary jazz radio program.

Introduction; 1. Royal Street ¿ A masked ball: Between canal and esplanade; 2. St. Claude Avenue ¿ Hard times and good children: The Lower 9th Ward ¿ Desire ¿ St. Roch ¿ Bywater; 3. Esplanade Avenue ¿ Escape routes: The Marigny ¿ The 7th Ward ¿ Bayou St. John; 4. Basin Street ¿ Memory and music: Congo Square ¿ Storyville ¿ Tremé; 5. St. Charles Avenue ¿ Blood and money: The Garden District ¿ The Irish Channel ¿ The University District ¿ Central City; 6. Outskirts ¿ Writing through loss.