LSU Press publishes the works of a host of talented scholars and poets. Each month, we take a moment to recognize the impact these authors and their works are having on communities nearby and around the world.
Trade
Richard Campanella’s much-anticipated study of New Orleans’s “best bank”—The West Bank of Greater New Orleans—has been released. As Campanella commented to Barri Bronston, “One of the most fascinating things I learned about the West Bank was just how much I had to unlearn from my prior understandings of Greater New Orleans.” Campanella maintains that the West Bank is a unique subregion with its own backstory, separate from that of the famed East Bank. You can read Barri Bronston’s article in the Tulane News here.
Civil War Books and Authors recently previewed Kenneth W. Noe’s forthcoming book, The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War. Recalling Noe’s “excellent” published essay on the effects of weather on Civil War outcomes, reviewer Andrew J. Wagenhoffer goes on to say that “The Howling Storm promises the most complete treatment of the subject to date.” You can read Wagenhoffer’s preview here.
Scholarly
Brian Matthew Jordan—coeditor, with Evan C. Rothera, of The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans—talked with Chris Mackowski of Emerging Civil War about the complex character of Civil War veteranhood, the new ground covered by many of the book’s essays, and its “stellar cast of contributors.” Read the full interview here.
W. Bland Whitley has high praise for Peter S. Onuf’s Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire in his review for the Journal of Southern Religion. “No scholar working today is better suited than Onuf to offer a deep appraisal of Jefferson’s ideology,” says Whitley, “and his choice to bounce Jefferson’s ideas off those of his allies and sometime rivals illuminates what made those ideas so powerful to his fellow Americans, then and now.” Read the entire review here.
Poetry
Matthew Thorburn’s latest collection, The Grace of Distance, was recently selected as a finalist for the 2020 Paterson Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. You can see the full list of finalists—and this year’s winner—here.
Erin Adair-Hodges featured Pleiades Press editor Jenny Molberg’s latest poetry collection, Refusal, in her National Poetry Month review for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Refusal is just that—a declaration against erasure, against abuse,” says Adair-Hodges. National Poetry Month might be over, but you can still find plenty of great recommendations (Molberg’s collection included) here.
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