Building the Devil’s Empire is the first comprehensive history of New Orleans’s early years, tracing the town’s development from its origins in 1718 to its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768. Shannon Lee Dawdy’s picaresque account of New Orleans’s wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers. But she also widens her lens to reveal the port city’s global significance, examining it… More >>
Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans
In this splendid and groundbreaking history of colonial New Orleans, Shannon Dawdy demonstrates her powers as research and raconteur and captivates the reader with her talent for spinning out the human stories that made New Orleans in its infancy the place of infamy, chicanery, and romance that has so firmly lodged it in the minds of Americans and others. It is a wonderful read and one that makes me, a historical archaeologist like Dawdy though not, I fear, one of her caliber, stew in impatient anticipation of her forthcoming works on the archaeology of our beloved Crescent City.
Rating: 5 / 5