Exploring the Crescent City from the ground up, Richard Campanella takes readers on a journey toward explaining the city's distinct urbanism and eccentricities. He reveals the why behind the where, delving into the historical and cultural forces that have shaped the spaces of New Orleans for more than three centuries.

For Campanella, every bewildering street grid and linguistic quirk has a story to tell about the landscape of Louisiana and its geography. It starts with an examination of neighborhoods, from the origins of faubourgs and wards to the impact of the slave trade on patterns of residence. Campanella explains how fragments of New Orleans streets continue to elude Google Maps and why humble Creole cottages sit alongside massive Greek Revival mansions. He considers the roles of modern urban planning, environmentalism, and preservation, all of which continue to influence the layout of the city and its suburbs. In the book's final section, Campanella explores the impact of natural disasters as well-known as Hurricane Katrina and as unfamiliar as "Sauve's Crevasse," an 1849 levee break that flooded more than 200 city blocks.

Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of nearly 200 articles about New Orleans and 10 books, including Bourbon Street: A History, Bienville's Dilemma, and Geographies of New Orleans. The only two-time winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award, Campanella has also received the Louisiana Library Association's Literary Award, the Williams Prize for Louisiana History from The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Monroe Fellowship from Tulane's New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. In 2016, the French government named Campanella as Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques (Knight in the Order of Academic Palms).

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, manager of adult programming for the library, at (504) 889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.