A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans

By Ari Kelman

Book Overview

This engaging environmental history explores the rise, fall, and rebirth of one of the nation's most important urban public landscapes, and more significantly, the role public spaces play in shaping people's relationships with the natural world. Ari Kelman focuses on the battles fought over New Orleans's waterfront, examining the link between a river and its city and tracking the conflict between public and private control of the river. He describes the impact of floods, disease, and changing technologies on New Orleans's interactions with the Mississippi. Considering how the city grew distant--culturally and spatially--from the river, this book argues that urban areas provide a rich source for understanding people's connections with nature, and in turn, nature's impact on human history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520234332
• ISBN13: 9780520234338
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Interesting But Uneven

This is a book by an academic for academics. That being said, this topic ached to be addressed. Kelman has done his homework concerning the first two centuries of New Orleans' relationship with the Mississippi. The third (1918-present) seems to stop with the defeat of the notorious riverfront expressway. The river is likely (according to some scientists) to shift away from New Orleans, leaving the riverfront a muddy trickle. Kelman is silent on this. The degree of pollution and the efforts to clean up the lower part of the river go unsung as well. The last parts of the book have a rushed feeling, as if the expansive early history sapped the author's resources and there was little left worth saying. Lively it's not, but the book is important and a good reference work for further research.