New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence

I first came across this book in the french market area near the river while I was visiting New Orleans for the second time. Slightly overpriced for the tourists, I decided to wait until I arrived home to find it cheaper at a local bookstore. It's a beautiful hardbound book with a cloth-covered spine that now sits in an easel at the top of my bookshelf. I have enjoyed it tremendously. Tons of history, and even more fabulous pictures. For any lover of "the big easy." Treat yourself to this book, and don't forget to take a look at part 1, Vestiges of Grandeur. The two make excellent coffee table books for anyone, and all of your guests will certainly spend hours thumbing through them.

Having just come back from my first trip to New Orleans, I promised myself to get a copy of this book! Not only has this book inspired to go back to New Orleans, but it's given the insight into the exotic and untamed world that still exists in New Orleans. It's a must book for people who enjoy great photographs and in-depth writing on the Cresent City.

As a frequent visitor and sometimes resident of NOLA, I had never found a book that truly captured the local heart of the city and its people...until I received this book. It is a feast for the eyes with its glorious photos. Similarly, its writing--done by a New Orleanian--is refreshing and honest. Everyone I know in New Orleans owns a copy of this book. I love it. I revisit it freqently. It never bores me.

Just returned from my fifth trip to the Crescent City and miss it already. I flipped through this book at a shop there and knew I would buy it as soon as I got home. In photographs and words, this is an evocation of New Orleans by two people who obviously love the place. Go with it and you'll be transported! New Orleans isn't perfect, but it is fascinating, unique, and exotic, which this book appreciates and shows off.

"New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence" is a sterling photographic essay of the City that Care Forgot. Richard Sexton's exquisite photographs and Randolph Delehanty's astute historical musings combine to make a marvelous literary gumbo. Sexton and Delehanty successfully capture the essence of contemporary New Orleans. From the semi-tropical climate and the "unabashed display of ruined finery" to the French influences and African-American culture, the writer and photographer admirably show not only "how New Orleans is different from other places, but why." Sexton and Delehanty are especially to be commended for not giving us some airy, ultra-polished style book. Everything here--the streets, the shops, the rooms, the houses--seem old, and yet, forever lovely and useful. This is a distinctive book about a distinctive city.