Stories of New Orleans

From Gen. Andrew Jackson to Marie Laveau to Paul Tulane, colorful legends of the early Crescent City convey a fascinating landscape. Author Andre Cajun's lively characters and locations etch an animated past relayed with artistic freedom. He imparts sensationalized circumstances that the modern reader will recognize as a typical style of today's media.

Cajun moved to New Orleans as a riverboat captain but soon found a more suitable career as an entertainer, delighting the crowds of visitors awaiting transport on the Mississippi with his historical parodies of Louisiana's rich traditions. Those embellished tales fill the pages of this vintage book. Predominantly fiction with just enough actual history to make them believable, these vignettes cover everything from a tongue-in-cheek expos 1/2 of the Quadroon Ballroom to the notorious Basin Street to assertions of Napoleon's remains hidden, along with pirate booty, deep in the bayous of Barataria.

This new edition is faithfully recreated from the 1951 version, with the addition of an informative foreword by John T. Magill. Cajun's unabashed exuberance for all things piratical and his taste for embellishment are celebrated much as they have been since this collection was originally released in 1941. Magill's foreword provides illuminating historical context documenting Cajun's societal biases along with his skewed sense of history-all of which make for an enjoyable read.