Books published by Louisiana State University Press

Until relatively recently, a legacy of silence restricted historical writing on the Great Hanging. In the first systematic treatment of this important event, Richard McCaslin also sheds much light on the tensions produced in southern society by the Civil War, the nature of disaffection in the Confederacy, and the American vigilante tradition.

Like the feast day recalled in its title, this collection of twenty poems venerates the dead. Brenda Marie Osbey invokes, impersonates, and converses with her Afro-New Orleans forebears, both blood ancestors and spiritual predecessors, weaving in hypnotic cadence a spell as potent as the religious and magical mysteries of her native culture.

In this groundbreaking study, Charles Ramsdell explores the causes of the South's defeat in the Civil War. Finding traditional military explanations insufficient, he argues that deficiencies on the homefront were fundamental to the collapse of the Confederacy.

Originally published in 1952 and long out of print, South of Freedom is a first-rate account of what it was like to live as a second-class citizen, to experience the segregation, humiliation, danger, stereotypes, economic exploitation, and taboos that were all part of life for African Americans in the 1940s and 1950s.

Written by the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Pharaoh, Pharaohis a meditation on time, memory, inheritance, and the irony of loss, loss of one's land, of one's past, of love itself.

In a collection that represents over thirty-five years of her writing life, this distinguished poet explores a wide range of subjects, which include her cultural and family history and reflect her fascination with music and the discoveries offered by language.

In this highly acclaimed and enduring biography, John Alden traces the interwoven histories of George Washington and the nation he helped to create, defend, and guide toward the future. Alden revisits the major events of Washington's personal and professional life, but the core of the biography concerns Washington's leadership roles.

Originally published in 1875, George Cary Eggleston's memoir, which proved immensely popular among readers throughout the country, is a nostalgic, often amusing collection of essays based on the author's Civil War experiences.

Told in the distinct voices of characters long dead and now gathered at an unspecified place and time, this poem recalls events leading to and resulting from the 1811 murder of a young slave by Thomas Jefferson's nephew.

Examines the 111 artillery, cavalry, and infantry units that Louisiana furnished to the Confederate armies. No other reference has the complete and accurate record of Louisiana's contribution to the war. For each unit, Bergeron provides a brief account of its war activities, including battles, losses, and dates of important events.

First published in 1971, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's comparison of two developing sugar plantation systems - St. Domingue's (Haiti) in the eighteenth century and Cuba's in the nineteenth century - changed the focus in comparative slavery studies.

Although recognised today as one of the genuine pioneers of black literature in this century, Claude McKay (1890-1948) died penniless and almost forgotten in a Chicago hospital. In this masterly study, Wayne Cooper presents a fascinating, detailed account of McKay's complex, chaotic, and frequently contradictory life.

Originally published in 1942, this perceptive and impartial analysis of one of the most baffling periods in American history, the months between the election of Lincoln and the fall of Fort Sumter, was a bold declaration of intellectual independence.

More than a century after Appomattox, the Civil War and the idea of the "Lost Cause" remain at the center of the southern mind. God and General Longstreet traces the persistence and the transformation of the Lost Cause from the first generation of former Confederates to more recent times.

Hailed by reviewers upon its publication more than thirty years ago, The Novels of William Faulkner remains the preeminent interpretation of Faulkner in the formalist critical tradition while it inspires Faulknerians of all methodologies. Part One contains detailed analyses of every novel from Soldiers' Pay to The Reivers, with particular emphasis on elucidation of character, theme, and structural technique. Part Two discusses interrelated patterns and preoccupations in Faulkner's writing generally. Insightful and well reasoned, Olga W. Vickery's work continues to be of enormous benefit to readers and scholars.

In this collection Jane Gentry evokes, in images as haunting as the Kentucky landscape, a garden thriving with the flowers of memory, a physical world that reflects a realm of transcendence. A Garden in Kentucky is a place of mystery, terror, beauty, and wonder, a garden to which readers will find themselves retuning again and again.

A comprehensive treatment of the black church and the southern environment in which it functioned from 1865 to 1900.

Here is the most complete account available of the long and varied history of Louisiana's Native American population. Focusing on the history and cultural evolution of the state's Indians, The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana identifies various tribal groups, charts their migrations within the state, and discusses their languages and customs. The book describes the Indians' methods of tribal and political organization, their manners of dress and adornment, the arts and crafts they perfected both for economic and aesthetic purposes, the role of religion in their lives, and a great deal more. It also analyzes the inevitable changes that the arrival of European settlers brought to the Indians' way of life.

An important primary source for eighty years, Lee's Dispatches is now once again available to Civil War scholars, students, and enthusiasts. When first published in 1914, these letters, written between June 2, 1862, and April 1, 1865, put Lee's strategy in clearer perspective and shed new light on certain of his moves.

Two months before the Civil War broke out, Emma Holmes made the first entry in a diary that would eventually hold vivid firsthand accounts of several major historical events. In presenting her picture of the wartime South, Holmes discussed numerous military figures, the role of women in the war effort, and the religious and social life of the day.

The determination with which the Confederate garrison of Port Hudson, Louisiana, held out--for seven weeks, fewer than 5,000 Confederate troops fended off almost 30,000 Yankees--makes it one of the most interesting campaigns of the Civil War. It was, in fact, the longest siege in U.S. military history. Edward Cunningham tells for the first time the complete story of the Union operation against this Confederate stronghold on the Lower Mississippi.

Alison Hawthorne Deming brings to her first collection of verse the kinds of scrupulous observation and clear-eyed analysis that characterize scientific inquiry as well as a poet's eye for the telling moment.

Takes an ingenious, creative approach in his consideration of the life of one of the American Revolution's heroes. Charles Royster argues that Lee's tragic life was different only in degree from those of many other patriots of the Revolution who viewed the peacetime fruits of their efforts with disappointment.