New OrleansNew Orleans is an indispensable element of America's national identity. As one of the most fabled cities in the world, it figures in countless novels, short stories, poems, plays, and films, as well as in popular lore and song. This book provides detailed discussions of all of the most significant writing that this city has ever inspired from its origins in a flood prone swamp to the rise of a creole culture at the edges of the European empires; from