Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs

Although all cities are reshaped nature, the intensity and scale of the reshaping of New Orleans, from a swampy floodplain to a modern metropolis, and the development of the petrochemical industry with resulting water and air polliution, environmental racism, and conflicts over state and federal regulation, make it an important place to study. Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs should provoke interest among environmental historians and geographers as well as those interested in the history of the region.

Represents the efforts of scholars who contributed 11 essays that chronicle the human transformation on the lower Mississippi River Valley, emphasizing the region's largest metropolis, New Orleans. . . . Recommended as an insightful addition to most environmental or natural history collections.

Craig Colten has done a great favor for those who teach about New Orleans and its region . . .This short volume is not only well written but also well organized and refreshingly free of both polemic and incomprehensivle scientific mumbo-jumbo. For those who want a readable overview of 'The City That Care Forgot' should have been 'The City That Should Have Cared,' I heartily recommend this volume. Don' t drink the water before drinking deep from this volume.

. . . provides a valuable service in fleshing out the relationship between city building and environmental transformation along Louisiana's industrial corridor. . . . important reading for students of environmental history and urban studies, as well as those concerned with the history of water resources, technology, or the befouling of Louisiana's environment.

. . . thought-provoking and valuable. . . . a strong interdisciplinary overview of the environmental framework that both resulted from and contributed to thr growth of New Orleans.

. . . a valuable contribution to the fields of environmental history, economic historym and historical geography. . . . a fine example of institutional economic history. Its editor and contributors are to be commended.

. . . a collection that informs, enlightens, and at times frightens. . . . but the reader is left with a notion of hope. For those interested in the environmental history of the Lower Mississippi Valley, this is a worthy addition to their reading list.

I plan to use it in an undergraduate environmental history course, both as a way to draw out key themes raised in the course and as a comparison to developments in other urban areas. It is a solid collection of essays, each of which addes to our understanding of how urban and industrial development can interact with natural systems and competing human uses of the environment.