November Roundup: News, Events, Reviews

November was quite a month here at LSU Press! Visitations by Lee Upton was a finalist in the short story category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards. A poem from Ed Falco’s new book was featured on Poem-a-Day. Samuel C. Hyde wrote an article for the Washington Post. Brannon Costello, Lisa Hinrichsen, Gina Caison, and Stephanie Rountree, and Sally Van Doren wrote fantastic posts for the LSU Press Blog. And we published new books by Bryan Giemza and Maria Hebert-Leiter, Peter O’Connor, Lisa Hinrichsen, Gina Caison, and Stephanie Rountree, Susannah J. Ural, Kristen Brill, David R. Slavitt, and James Applewhite.

Below you’ll find a list of our December titles, upcoming events with our authors, and some recent publicity and reviews of our books. If you want to keep up with the press in real time, follow us on TwitterInstagram, and Facebook!

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Selected Publicity and Praise

 Promise: Poems by Sally Van Doren

“St. Louisan Sally Van Doren’s third collection Promise features smart poems that bring a cheeky edge to the theme of domestic bliss. By-and-large tender poems of praise for familial love, they accomplish this celebration by telling the truth about it, dirty laundry included.”—Saint Louis Post-Dispatch

Voodoo and Power in New Orleans: The Politics of Religion in New Orleans, 1881-1940 by Kodi A. Roberts

“His careful study contributes to on-going scholarly efforts to better situate African diasporic religions within their immediate social settings and in the context of practitioners’ everyday struggles and desires.”—Nova Religio

Maintaining Segregation: Children and Racial Instruction in the South, 1920-1955 by LeeAnn G. Reynolds

“This ambitious study sheds light on how Jane and Jim Crow circumstances conditioned the South’s black and white younger inhabitants to manage racial inequality in the decades preceding the Civil Rights Movement. . . . The author displays an excellent familiarity with existing scholarly literature, and her arguments are cogent. . . . the narrative reads well, is engaging, and adds depth to the current understanding of a complex place and time.”—CHOICE

Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation by Earl J. Hess

“In Hess’s study one can find both a sound survey history of Civil War military transportation and a revealing quantitative analysis leading readers to the inescapable conclusion that the Union logistical network outperformed its foe’s in every possible way. Civil War Logistics is highly recommended.”—Civil War Books and Authors

Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella

“Anyone with a library of books on New Orleans will want this one. And unlike some other reference books, Campanella’s is destined to be one that comes off the shelf over and over again.”—New Orleans Advocate

Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles Over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era edited by Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker

“Taken together, these deeply researched and cogently written essays comprise a kind of magic lantern that illuminates how many of today’s contentious social issues, like equality before the law, concepts of race, and rights of citizenship, were born during those tumultuous years.”—America’s Civil War

The Army of the Potomac in the Overland & Petersburg Campaigns by Steven E. Sodergren

“This is a solid, major contribution to our understanding of why men fought and how they were affected by and adapted to changing wartime conditions.”—NYMAS Review

The Secret Life of Bacon Tait a White Slave Trader Married to a Free Woman of Color by Hank Trent.

“Trent excels in re-creating the world of antebellum fortune-hunters like Tait. Lynchburg and the Richmond slave trade are diligently explored. A reader curious for more details as to how the trade worked (especially in terms of the operation of slave jails or “pens”) will find this small book an excellent resource. Trent makes it easy to imagine a grimy place of petty cruelties and vast injustices, where virtually every interaction possible within the boundaries of the peculiar institution might be found, all within a city block.”—Civil War News

Stepdaughters of History: Southern Women and the American Civil War by Catherine Clinton

“Clinton reminds us of the significant work that has been done as well as the significant work that remains to be done in original research, textbook publications, and college lectures. Those invited to give Fleming Lectures are known for their bold and original scholarship, and Catherine Clinton is no exception.”—Journal of Southern History

John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, and Ardent Nationalist by Andrew R. Black

“Andrew R. Black has deftly taken the memory of a man who has lain dormant in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery since 1870 and has breathed new life into Kennedy’s legacy as an important American literary and political figure.”—Journal of Southern History