Authentic New Orleans

In this remarkable book, Kevin Fox Gotham combines careful historical research, vivid ethnographic observation and sophisticated theoretical insight to produce an indispensable account of New Orleans tourist economy, from its earliest origins to the eve of Hurricane Katrina. A major achievement. -- Richard Douglas Lloyd,author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City
“Gotham succeeds most clearly in offering a fresh interpretation of the 1884 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition and in capturing the complexity of New Orleanians’ attitudes about “authenticity” at different moments in the city’s history. He also offers a compelling analysis enlivened with colorful details, especially for the mid- to late nineteenth century and the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His work deserves historians’ attention for emphatically rejecting one-dimensional, theory-driven analyses that fail to capture the diversity of human agency. * The Journal of Southern History *
A testament to the ways our social and legal system failed these women beginning in their childhoods and ended up causing them to fail their own children by being responsible for their deaths. * PsycCRITIQUES *
Gotham traces a fascinating yet critical history of racial exclusion, corporate tourism, and urban branding that students of all cities should read. -- Sharon Zukin,author of The Cultures of Cities
Gotham shows how over time power relations, conflict, and 'tourism practices' have constructed and reshaped the authentic and explains the ways that reisdents through the years have defined authenticity. In doing so, he succeeds in demonstrating that racial inequalities, up which the Katrina disaster focused the nation's attention, helped toshape the images of New Orleans that promoters of the city projected to the rest of the nation and the world. -- John Gruesser,African American Review
Authentic New Orleans is a convincing and productive work, which will be fruitful for further research on gentrification within urban studies. -- Thomas Doerfler,University of Bayreuth
Authentic New Orleans provides a unique interpretation of the city, one that goes beyond its material elements (and devastation) and moves into the rich cultural roots of this special American landmark. I recommend it not only to students of cities, but to all those with a passion for and interest in American culture. -- Anthony Orum,author of City-Building in America
A seminal social and economic history of tourism and travel promotion in New Orleans, covering nearly two centuries from the early 1800s to the present. Authentic New Orleans should instantly become a standard case history in the sociology of tourism. -- John Hannigan,author of Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis
Gothams bold critique of the heritage industry in New Orleans as exemplified by its famous French Quarter, Mardi Gras parades, and Creole cuisine exposes a city steeped in the ugly legacy of racial segregation and class exclusion. In rich narrative prose Gotham persuasively explains how commercial development and tourism's overarching footprint may have devastated the heart of the city even before Katrina washed it all away. This is an important book. -- David Grazian,author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs
Most of us probably do not think of sociologists as historians, but Kevin Fox Gotham, associate professor of sociology at Tulane University, shows us what is to be gained by bringing those two disciplines and their diverse methods of analyses together in productive counterpoint. Gotham’s use of a post-hurricane Katrina frame for considering tourism and New Orleans provides an accessible lead-in for most readers, but the historical depth of his study enables him to offer significant theoretical contributions to our ways of thinking about the relationships among “race,” tourism, and place, over time * American Journal of Sociology *