State Library of Louisiana Library System

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2013

Format:	Atlas, Map, Printed Cartographic Material, Cartographic Material
Author:	Solnit, Rebecca, author.
Title:	Unfathomable city : a New Orleans atlas / by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker ; cartographers, Richard Campanella, Ben Pease, Jakob Rosenzweig, Molly Roy, Shizue Seigel.
Edition:	Scale not given.
Publisher, Date:	Berkeley, California : University of California Press, [2013] ©2013
Description:	166 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 31 cm paper illustration map
Summary:	"Like the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, this book is a brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, one that provides a vivid, complex look at the multi-faceted nature of New Orleans, a city replete with contradictions. More than twenty essays assemble a chorus of vibrant voices, including geographers, scholars of sugar and bananas, the city's remarkable musicians, prison activists, environmentalists, Arab and Native voices, and local experts, as well as the coauthors' compelling contributions. Featuring 22 full-color two-page-spread maps, Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The innovative maps' precision and specificity shift our notions of the Mississippi, the Caribbean, Mardi Gras, jazz, soils and trees, generational roots, and many other subjects, and expand our ideas of how any city is imagined and experienced. Together with the inspired texts, they show New Orleans as both an imperiled city-by erosion, crime, corruption, and sea level rise-and an ageless city that lives in music as a form of cultural resistance. Compact, lively, and completely original, Unfathomable City takes readers on a tour that will forever change the way they think about place."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects:	Human geography -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Maps. Human geography -- Louisiana -- New Orleans. New Orleans (La.) -- Maps. New Orleans (La.) -- Social life and customs. New Orleans (La.)
Other Author:	Snedeker, Rebecca, author. Campanella, Richard, cartographer. Pease, Ben, cartographer. Rosenzweig, Jakob, cartographer. Roy, Molly, cartographer. Seigel, Shizue, cartographer.
Notes:	Maps with accompanying essays.
Contents:	Sinking in and reaching out -- A city in time : La Nouvelle-Orléans over 300 years How New Orleans happened / by Richard Campanella Ebb and flow : migrations of the houma, erosions of the coast Southward into the vanishing lands / by Monique Verdin People who Here they come, there they go / by Lolis Eric Elie Moves, remains : hiding and seeking the dead Bodies / by Nathaniel Rich Stationary revelations : sites of contemplation and delight On a strange island / by Billy Sothern Oil and water : extracting petroleum, exterminating nature Of levees and prisons : failures of containment, surges of freedom Lockdown Louisiana / by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs Civil rights and lemon ice : three lives in the old city The presence of the past / by Dana Logsdon and Dawn Logsdon Sugar heaven and sugar hell : pleasures and brutalities of a commodity No sweetness is light / by Shirley Thompson ¡Bananas! Fruits' fortunes at the gate of the Tropics / by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Hot and steamy : selling seafood, selling sex Salacious and crustaceous / by Evan Casper-Futterman The Mississippi is (not) the Nile : Arab New Orleans, real and imagined The ibis-headed god of New Orleans / by Khaled Hegazzi and Andy Young The line-up : live oak corridors and carnival parade routes Sentinals and celebrants / by Eve Abrams Repercussions : rhythm and resistance across the Atlantic "It enriches my spirit to be linked to such a deep and far-reaching piece of what this universe is" : a conversation with Herreast Harrison and Donald Harrison, Jr. -- Thirty-nine Sundays : social aid and pleasure clubs take it to the streets Rollin' wid it / by Joel Dinerstein Bass lines : deep sounds and soils The floating cushion : George Porter Jr. on the city's low end (essay) -- Where dey at : Bounce calls up a vanished city A home in song / by Garnette Cadogan Snakes and ladders : what rose up, what fell down during Hurricane Katrina Nothing was foreordained / by Rebecca Solnit St. Claude Avenue : loss and recovery on an inner-city artery The beginning of this road / by Maurice Carlos Ruffin Juju and cuckoo : taking care of crazy Holding it together, falling apart / by Rebecca Snedeker Lead and lies : mouths full of poison Charting and territories of untruth / by Rebecca Solnit Waterland The cement lily pad / by Rebecca Snedeker
LCCN:	2013014799
ISBN:	9780520274037 0520274032 9780520274044 0520274040
Other Number:	844372804
System Availability:	2
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# Local items in:	2
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New York Times Review

My first landlord in New Orleans, a Tennessee native who had lived in New York and Washington, told me that after a few years in the financial and political capitals, he understood them. But after a decade in this sweltering city, with its 18th-century fusion cuisine, misplaced Massapequa-on-the-Mississippi accent and transvestite rap divas, he was "still just peeling back the layers." In the second volume of her planned trilogy of deliciously eccentric atlases, Solnit, the Left Coast polymath, amasses a team led by Snedeker, a New Orleans filmmaker, to plumb the Crescent City's admittedly "unfathomable" depths. As cultured New Orleanians know (or at least pretend to), the word essay comes from the French essayer (to attempt); the book's most rewarding essays are not its most successful attempts but its most audacious. Is it a single civic psychosis that led Louisiana to construct the world's largest pumping station and the nation's largest prison in costly, fruitless attempts to solve New Orleans's notorious flooding and crime problems? Perhaps. Do local cravings for raw oysters and raunchy sex share a root? Maybe. Regardless, this objet d'art is as infectious as a second line, an urban art form that the scholar-parader Joel (Heavy D) Dinerstein points out is named for its audience participants instead of its leaders. With "Unfathomable City," Solnit and Snedeker have produced an idiosyncratic, luminous tribute to the greatest human creation defined by its audience participants: the city itself.

Publishers Weekly Review

New York City's vitality and diversity are done justice in this third in a series of city atlases, following Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. As editor Solnit states in her introduction to the present volume, her trilogy explores "what maps can do to describe the ingredients and systems that make up a city and what stories remain to be told after we think we know where we are." The book includes 26 wonderfully inventive maps, presented in color on full pages and accompanied by essays by a variety of contributors, including historians, ethnographers, journalists, and novelists. The maps are often playful and idiosyncratic. Highlights include "Harper's and Harpooners: Whaling and Publishing in Melville's Manhattan," "Mysterious Land of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Clan's Staten Island," and a map entitled "City of Women," which superimposes the names of women over stations on a subway map. Even lifelong New Yorkers fluent in their city's history will find this work thought-provoking. Color illus. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Summary

Like the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, this book is a brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, one that provides a vivid, complex look at the multi-faceted nature of New Orleans, a city replete with contradictions. More than twenty essays assemble a chorus of vibrant voices, including geographers, scholars of sugar and bananas, the city's remarkable musicians, prison activists, environmentalists, Arab and Native voices, and local experts, as well as the coauthors' compelling contributions. Featuring 22 full-color two-page-spread maps, Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

The innovative maps' precision and specificity shift our notions of the Mississippi, the Caribbean, Mardi Gras, jazz, soils and trees, generational roots, and many other subjects, and expand our ideas of how any city is imagined and experienced. Together with the inspired texts, they show New Orleans as both an imperiled city--by erosion, crime, corruption, and sea level rise--and an ageless city that lives in music as a form of cultural resistance. Compact, lively, and completely original, Unfathomable City takes readers on a tour that will forever change the way they think about place.

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