Books published by Louisiana State University Press

In Galaxie Wagon, Darnell Arnoult navigates the territory of middle age to find humor, heartbreak, and wisdom in a phase of life where the body begins to betray itself, yet romance is still possible and childhood dreams are still attainable.

Grounded in wonder and fueled by an impulse to praise, the poems in James Davis May's debut collection, Unquiet Things, grapple with scepticism, violence, and death to generate lasting insights into the human experience.

St Paul writes "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." The poems in William Wenthe's God's Foolishness mine the feelings of human uncertainty in matters of love and desire, time and death, and uncover difficult truths with transformative insights.

In her beguiling new collection, Katherine Soniat invites the reader to celebrate the unfinished and unsure. The poems in this volume do not demand or offer certainty, existing instead in the spaces between the real and the imagined, between past and present and future.

The existing scholarship on Robert E. Lee is so voluminous, complex, and contradictory that it is difficult to penetrate the inner Lee and appreciate him as a general. Peter Carmichael has assembled an array of Civil War historians who rigorously return to Lee's own words and actions in interpreting the war in Virginia.

Presents the history of the twentieth-century American novel as a continuous narrative dialogue between white and black voices. Shelly Brivic traces how four of the most renowned works written between 1930 and 1990 progress through the interaction of white and black perspectives toward confronting the calamity of slavery and its continuing legacy.

Bobby Rogers's second collection, Social History, listens hard to the voices of American characters and celebrates the gestures of ordinary life. The long lines of his narrative poems trace the undulations of southern speech, and his careful eye for detail reflects the influence of generations of storytellers.

Brings together work that reflects the interweaving of history, memory, and the indelible bonds between living and dead that has marked the output of Louisiana Poet Laureate Emerita Brenda Marie Osbey. Comprising poems written over the span of four decades, this thematic collection highlights the unity of Osbey's voice and narrative intent.

Draws on her experiences as a mother struggling to strike a balance between protecting her daughter from the world's perils and dazzling her with its many wonders. The birds that fill these pages convey a sense of fragility and uncertainty, while the rhythm of the seasons provides a comfort that promises the old will be made new again.

The insightful and provocative stories in Tom Paine's collection spring from a series of seismic events that rocked the post-millennium world. News headlines from the last decade not only inspire the settings but also raise ethical questions that percolate throughout this ominous and timely work.

Drawing from a career of almost fifty years, Daniel Mark Epstein's collection of new and selected poems forms a lyrical autobiography of its author as a poet and a man. Dawn to Twilight examines universal themes such as love and aging, happiness and despair, each of which Epstein approaches differently throughout his writing career.

Often overlooked in historic studies of New Orleans, the city's Hispanic and Latino populations have contributed significantly to its development. Hispanic and Latino New Orleans offers the first scholarly study of these communities in the Crescent City. This trailblazing volume not only explores the evolving role of Hispanics and Latinos in shaping the city's unique cultural identity but also reveals how their history informs the ongoing national debate about immigration.As early as the eighteenth century, the Spanish government used incentives of land and money to encourage Spaniards from other regions of the empire-particularly the Canary Islands-to settle in and around New Orleans. Though immigration from Spain declined markedly in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase, the city quickly became the gateway between the United States and the emerging independent republics of Latin America. The burgeoning trade in coffee, sugar, and bananas attracted Cuban and Honduran immigrants to New Orleans, while smaller communities of Hispanics and Latinos from countries such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Brazil also made their marks on the landscapes and neighborhoods of the city, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.Combining accessible historical narrative, interviews, and maps that illustrate changing residential geographies, Hispanic and Latino New Orleans is a landmark study of the political, economic, and cultural networks that produced these diverse communities in one of the country's most distinctive cities.

In his comprehensive study of the economic ideology of the early republic, James Huston argues that Americans developed economic attitudes during the Revolutionary period that remained virtually unchanged until the close of the nineteenth century.

First published in 1970, this book makes the case that the New Deal, by emphasizing stability for all citizens, situated itself firmly within the traditions of American democracy. Hubert Humphrey's cogent assessment of Roosevelt's policies offers insights still applicable in current discourse about the financial and social sectors within the US.

A Depression-era comic masterpiece, E. P. O'Donnell's The Great Big Doorstep centers on the Crochets, a Cajun family who live in a ramshackle house between the levee and the Mississippi River. It has remained a literary and cultural classic since its publication in 1941.

Floyd Skloot's eighth poetry collection, Approaching Winter, evokes the fluid and dynamic nature of memory as it ebbs and floods through our daily lives. Traveling from Portland's Willamette River to the hushed landscapes of the afterlife, the poems in this collection acknowledge the passage of time and the darkness that lies ahead.

An account of spiritual survival through the practice of literary art, the poems in David Huddle's eighth collection, Dream Sender, move among a variety of poetic forms and voices. By turns outrageous and pragmatic, Huddle's poems acknowledge the powerful and disturbing currents of the contemporary world.

Purporting to be a "lost" seventeenth book of the 16-volume Anthologia Graeca, Book Seventeen uses the themes and images of ancient mythology to conjure a new way of looking at our modern world.

Delves deeply into the human relationship with the divine and its capacity for empathy, transformation, and the tolerance of difference and doubt. Bruce Bond seeks neither to praise nor to attack institutional religions, instead choosing to explore their interactions with the inner lives of those who hold them sacred.

A darkly insightful evocation of the post-industrial era, Joy, PA tells the story of a family teetering on the precipice of ruin. Both transfixing and disconcerting, Steven Sherrill's empathetic portrait of alienation elicits hope and sympathy amidst shattered but no-less-dignified lives.

Early in the twentieth century, the Cuban sugarcane industry faced a labour crisis when Cuban and European workers balked at the inhumane conditions they endured. In response, sugar companies imported thousands of black workers from other Caribbean colonies. This book illuminates the story of these immigrants.

First published in 1955, Oscar Winzerling's Acadian Odyssey has remained unsurpassed as a study of the exodus of 1755. Based on original documents uncovered by the author, the book details the history of the Cajun people, whose traditions and beliefs stand as a cultural cornerstone of the state of Louisiana.

Investigates loss and healing, change and permanence, in a hospital trauma center and the eroding landscape of southern Louisiana. The diener himself, the morgue attendant who assists the dead in the interstice between the living world and the world beyond, is the person with whom Martha Serpas most identifies in this collection.

Completes the picture of the Louisiana Purchase presented through the journals of explorers Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis. This book is a treasure of the early natural history of North America and the first depiction of this new US southern frontier.

Weaving themes of death, migration, and aging into an exploration of the natural world, Brendan Galvin's work reflects a deep engagement with the places he and his family have called home, as well as with the triumphs and tragedies of human life.

In this collection, Jacqueline Osherow gives us perfectly formed, musical poems that glide between the worlds of art, architecture, literature, and religion. Traveling through Europe, Tel Aviv, and New York, Osherow observes with a keen eye the details of objects and of the conversations and interactions she has with others

Solitary, graceful, and contemplative, cats have inspired poets from Charles Baudelaire to Margaret Atwood to serve as their chroniclers and celebrants. With Familiars, Fred Chappell proves himself a worthy addition to the fellowship of poets who have sought to immortalize their beloved cats.

In Christian theology, a skandalon is a distraction from grace, a maze of error where we wander pointlessly, wasting our lives. To the ancient Greeks, a skandalon was the trigger of a trap. T.R. Hummer's labyrinthine new collection encompasses these meanings and more, as its poems take various paths to unexpected destinations.

Through the poems in Spans, Elizabeth Seydel Morgan examines life from the perspective of one who appreciates the complexities of the world but finds pleasure in events as predictable as the changing of the seasons or as uncomplicated as a visit to an art museum.

Looks at the earth and our life on it from two perspectives at once: objectively, as if from a great distance, and subjectively, focusing in on the body with all its cells and hungers. Alice Friman's poems dance between these two vantage points, asking important questions.