| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. By Ari Kelman. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xiv, 283 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-520-23432-4.)
Ari Kelman has written an environmental history of New Orleans that focuses on the city and its riverfront. At its core is an examination of the public and private use of space along the riverfront and the definition of that usage. Kelman focuses on six key developments in the Crescent City riverfront's history: the early-nineteenth-century legal cases about private or public ownership of the batture area along the city's riverfront, the advent of steam-powered travel on the Mississippi River, the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, the use of technology to promote commercial advancement after the Civil War, the flood of 1927, and the riverfront expressway controversy of the 1960s. He concludes that nature played a greater role in the evolution of the southern metropolis than its residents and promoters, particularly the commercial elite, understood.	1
Kelman is an excellent writer who has done extensive research into New Orleans history. He has unearthed numerous details that enhance his story. His basic account of the city's past, however, will not be new to those well acquainted with the economic and social history of New Orleans, especially thoughtful students who know the works of George Dargo, John Barry, Richard Baumbach, and William Borah.	. . .

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