Campanella’s scholarship, which largely focuses on the city of New Orleans, is compelling in its range, providing a model for those who wish to work across disciplinary boundaries seamlessly and substantively. In this collection, Campanella compiles seventy-four brief articles, most of them previously published, arranged topically in five sections that include thematic excursions across time and space designed to help readers understand the city and its distinctive twists and turns. The two strongest sections are “Architectural Geographies and the Built Environment” and “Disaster and Recovery,” which puts the city’s recent tribulations into a useful comparative context. According to Campanella, the book “has one primary goal, and this is spatial explanation—elucidating the why behind the where” (xiii). This book is recommended to anyone coming to New Orleans, whether for a weekend or a summer of intensive research, and certainly to any historian, geographer, literary scholar, or academic who is seeking inspiration...

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