Creating the Big Easy New Orleans And the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945

Stanonis, Anthony J.

ISBN 10: 0820328227 / ISBN 13: 9780820328225

Published by University of Georgia Press, 2006

About this Item

Gift inscription on title page. Signed by author. This book is in very good condition; no remainder marks. It does have some cover shelfwear. Inside pages are clean. ; 8.80 X 6 X 1.10 inches; 344 pages.

Seller Inventory # 090713-014-074

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating the Big Easy New Orleans And the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820328227
• ISBN 13: 9780820328225
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Between the World Wars, New Orleans transformed its image from that of a corrupt and sullied port of call into that of a national tourist destination. Anthony J. Stanonis tells how boosters and politicians reinvented the city to build a modern mass tourism industry and, along the way, fundamentally changed the city's cultural, economic, racial, and gender structure.

Stanonis looks at the importance of urban development, historic preservation, taxation strategies, and convention marketing to New Orleans' makeover and chronicles the city's efforts to domesticate its jazz scene, "democratize" Mardi Gras, and stereotype local blacks into docile, servile roles. He also looks at depictions of the city in literature and film and gauges the impact on New Orleans of white middle-class America's growing prosperity, mobility, leisure time, and tolerance of women in public spaces once considered off-limits.

Visitors go to New Orleans with expectations rooted in the city's "past": to revel with Mardi Gras maskers, soak up the romance of the French Quarter, and indulge in rich cuisine and hot music. Such a past has a basis in history, says Stanonis, but it has been carefully excised from its gritty context and scrubbed clean for mass consumption.

About the Author

ANTHONY J. STANONIS is a lecturer in modern U.S. history at Queens University, Belfast. He is the editor of Dixie Emporium: Tourism, Foodways, and Consumer Culture in the American South and author of Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945 (both Georgia).