Books published by Louisiana State University Press

Paul Hoffman's groundbreaking book focuses on a neglected area of colonial history - southeastern North America during the sixteenth-century. The first book to link the earliest voyages with the explorations of the sixteenth century and the settlement of later colonies, Hoffman's work is an important reassessment of southern colonial history.

When Generals in Gray was published in 1959, scholars and critics immediately hailed it as one of the few indispensable books on the American Civil War. This is a paperback edition of Ezra J. Warner's magnum opus with its concise, detailed biographical sketches and photographs of all 425 Confederate generals.

Meditating upon topics as far-ranging as the movement of photons in the heart of the sun and the single drop of blood on the finger of a girl holding a rosebud, James Applewhite's poems explore deeply the mysteries of the galaxies and the complexities of being human.

An accomplished poet and a keen observer of the human condition, David Slavitt deploys both skills to create the whimsical, insightful, and witty poems of The Octaves.

A leading proponent of racial equality in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century, Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905) served as the most articulate spokesman of the radical wing of the Republican party. Undaunted Radical presents Tourgee's most significant letters, speeches, and essays.

Intelligent, adaptable, and strong-willed, Lucy Bakewell Audubon was, DeLatte shows, the partner Audubon needed for his life and for his work. As noted Audubon expert Christoph Irmscher says in his foreword, "When [DeLatte] slips into her character's skin, she does so unobtrusively and to great effect, thus, we are right there with Lucy."

The title of Ron Smith's new collection comes from Yeats's observation that creators "must go from desire to weariness and so to desire again, and live but for the moment when vision comes to our weariness like terrible lightning, in the humility of the brutes."

Features a series of short lyric poems, contemplative vignettes of daily life that examine friendship, marriage, and family with a veneer of playfulness. These poems take us into a space where a year is compressed into minutes and a small trickle of memory floods the mind.

Betty Adcock brings fierce insight to her seventh poetry collection, Rough Fugue. Her elegant stanzas evoke bygone moments of beauty, reflection, and rage. "Let things be spare," she writes, "and words for things be thin / as the slice of moon / the loon's cry snips."

The percussive poems of Stripper in Wonderland move from birth to death, funk to hip-hop, and racism to religion as Derrick Harriell explores the life of a modern black man transplanted from the American Midwest to the Deep South.

Brings together a selection of poems from nine previously published books, along with a generous assortment of new work. At the heart of this collection are investigations of the role of eros, language, and creative life, and of the wonder and anxiety of their absence.

The horrific 1955 slaying of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till marks a significant turning point in the history of American race relations. The eleven essays in this volume examine how the narrative of the Till lynching continues to haunt racial consciousness and to resonate in our collective imagination.

Provides a sample of the enormous documentary record on the domestic population of the Confederate states, offering a glimpse of what it was like to live through a brutal war fought almost entirely on southern soil.

First published in 1930, the essays in this manifesto constitute one of the outstanding cultural documents in the history of the South. In it, twelve southerners defended individualism against the trend of baseless conformity in an increasingly mechanised and dehumanised society.

Tells the remarkable story of William Johnson, a slave who rose to freedom, business success, and high community standing in the heart of the South, all before 1850. Based on Johnson's diary, letters, and business records, this biography reveals the complicated life of a freedman in Mississippi and a new perspective on antebellum Natchez.

Meghan Kenny's debut collection, Love Is No Small Thing, gives readers an assembly of keenly drawn characters each navigating the world looking for an understanding of love in its many forms and complexities, be it romantic, parental, elusive, or eternal.

This biography of Huey P. Long captures the atmosphere of public life in the Pelican State. It analyzes Long's control of Louisiana and his role in national politics.

Debra Spark's fourth novel, Unknown Caller, tells the story of a brief, failed marriage and its complicated aftermath. Spark's candid, intricate novel highlights the near-impossibility of truly knowing another person, the pain in failing relationships, and the joy in successful ones.

Presents poems that delve deep into a life reimagined through a mythologized past. Moving from childhood to the present, weaving through the Italian immigrant streets of Pittsburgh, to his parochial school, from the ballpark to church and home again, these contemplative poems present a situation unique to the poet but familiar to us all.

native Alison Pelegrin gives us poems that describe the terrible power of nature even as they underscore the state's beauty. The poet moves from the familiar gaudy delights of life in New Orleans to immerse the reader in the vastly different experience of living north of Lake Pontchartrain.

A book-length poem addressed to an unborn child lost in miscarriage. Beginning with the hope and promise of springtime, poet Matthew Thorburn traces the course of a year with sections set in each of the four seasons.

Atmospheric and reflective, these poems travel with equal ease through the world of fine arts and the places where we live, highlighting the vivid sights and sounds of each in turn.

Offers the first English-language translation of the memoirs of General Maximo Castillo of Chihuahua, a pivotal figure in the civil war that consumed Mexico between 1910 and 1920. Castillo's role in the Mexican Revolution, in which he emerged as an influential leader, was largely forgotten by history until the discovery of his memoirs.

Julie Funderburk's debut poetry collection, The Door That Always Opens, braids together poems of sharp lyrical imagery and experimental narrative focused frequently on houses: houses under construction or demolition, inhabited, abandoned, and vandalized.

In lyric poetry with the dramatic sweep of a historical novel, Jay Rogoff's Enamel Eyes, a Fantasia on Paris, 1870 reimagines "the terrible year" when the Franco-Prussian War shook the City of Lights. Using multiple voices and poetic forms, Rogoff skilfully recreates the wonder and horror of these months of siege.

Greg Alan Brownderville's third collection of poetry employs inventive phrasing and vivid imagery to construct a particular life marked by religion, confused by desire, dulled by alcohol, and darkened by death. But Brownderville also skilfully uses humour to soften the disquieting images that haunt these stanzas.

In her third collection, From Nothing, Anya Krugovoy Silver follows a mother, wife, and artist as illness and loss of loved ones disrupt the peaceful flow of life. Grounded in the traditions of meditative and contemplative poetry, From Nothing confronts disease and mortality with the healing possibilities of verse.

The stories in History of Art examine the definitive, yet paradoxical, preoccupations of humankind - namely art-making and war - and the emotions that underpin both: passion and sentimentality, obsession and delusion, ambition and insecurity, fear and envy.