Hope & New Orleans

Book excerpt: New Orleans is a city of beautiful contradictions, evidenced by its street names. New Orleans crosses with Hope, Pleasure and Duels. Religious couples with Nuns, Market and Race. Music, Arts and Painters are parallel. New Orleans enfolds its denizens in the protection of saints, the artistry of Muses and the bravery of military leaders. The city's street names are inseparable from its diverse history. They serve as guideposts as well as a narrative that braid its pride, wit and seedier history into a complex web that to this day simultaneously joins and shows the cracks within the city. Learn about Bourbon's royal lineage, the magnitude of Napoleon's influence, how Tchoupitoulas's history is just as long and vexing as its spelling and why mispronouncing such streets as Burgundy, Calliope and Socrates doesn't mean you are incorrect--it just means you are local Told with precision and photos as vibrant, irreverent and memorable as La Nouvelle Orleans itself, author Sally Asher delivers an updated and reinvented look at the city that care forgot.