Since 1926, Pelican Publishing Company has been committed to publishing books of quality and permanence that enrich the lives of those who read them.
Overlooking the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a Gothic-style castle stands out in dignity among neighboring buildings. Despite the elegant architecture with impressive turrets, stained-glass windows, and pitched gables, this remarkable structure is more than bricks and iron. The first Louisiana state house is a lasting reminder of what the building once symbolized: the hope for prosperity.
This is the ePub/eBook version of this title. This is not the print edition.
John Rees, soldier and freedom fighter, was a shadowy figure who surfaced during two crucial nineteenth-century revolts and then disappeared from history. For the first time, author John Humphries reveals the fate of the man, first mentioned as a member of the New Orleans Greys, who fought for Texan Independence at the Alamo and narrowly escaped execution at the Goliad Mission.
A name well known to most Americans, Jesse James was a veteran of the Civil War, a bank robber, and a very romanticized popular hero. Although James has been the subject of countless biographies and historical novels, as well as the theatre and cinema, new light can still be shed on his life.
After Napoleon Bonaparte’s final exile to the island of St. Helena, his once-unsurpassed army and loyal soldiers were left leaderless. Threatened by the victorious Bourbons, the soldiers turned to the New World as a place of refuge and hope.
An engaging exploration of the political, cultural, and economic influences that shaped post-Reconstruction New Orleans, this comprehensive history discusses a range of topics, from the politics of mayoral races including the story of the “Mafia” slaying of Police Chief David Hennessy in 1890 to the development of the Carnival and Mardi Gras traditions still prevalent in New Orleans today. In an effort to help fill the void surrounding this period, Joy J. Jackson places New Orleans in the context of the New South as she examines the city’s unique historical attributes.
The years just before 1880 until about 1885 are considered the “outlaw years,” when lawlessness developed a law of its own and planned an empire.
Whoa, pardner! Sit y’self down for some good ole storytellin’ ’bout the wild, wild West. Western writer Phillip W. Steele and country music artist John D. LeVan have combined their talents and interests in true stories of the Old West in this exciting narrative. Also available on audiocassette.
In the lore of the Wild West, the Younger brothers have been glorified as heroes and outlaws. Like Jesse and Frank James, with whom the Youngers once rode, these men are remembered for bank robberies, the Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, and their hooliganism. Ride the Razor’s Edge dramatically describes their adventures, while also placing their actions in the wider perspective of the times in which they lived.
If you feel nostalgic about the days of gorgeous hoop skirts, handsome southern gentlemen, and exquisite dinners, then you’ll love this memoir in which Ms. Ripley takes readers back to antebellum days in New Orleans. Realizing that the times recorded here had drifted away forever, the author purposed to make a record for her progeny of the way things used to be. Paperback.
On the pages of this book one hundred gallant men from the American South come to life. Through both picture and story we meet everyone from Sam Houston, a man who rose from the depths of personal tragedy to achieve greatness, to John James Audubon, who endured years of poverty until his genius was finally recognized in the stately mansions of London and Paris. Hardcover.
Was Dr. Etienne Deschamps a vicious murderer, or insane? The French dentist made his home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. In addition to traditional dental procedures, he treated patients by using his supposed magnetic and hypnotic powers, frequently using chloroform. Dangerously obsessed with the lost treasure of Jean Lafitte, Deschamps began a search for the perfect spirit medium to guide him to its hiding place.
What kind of people would leave the comfort of the East behind to forge a life of their own in the Wild West? Individualistic, strong, and down-to-earth people who created a semblance of civilization where there once was none, and who took the law into their own hands because there were no other hands to take it.
In June 1892, a thirty-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class railway ticket from his native New Orleans to Covington, north of Lake Pontchartrain. The two-hour trip had hardly begun when Plessy was arrested and removed from the train. Though Homer Plessy was born a free man of color and enjoyed relative equality while growing up in Reconstruction-era New Orleans, by 1890 he could no longer ride in the same carriage with white passengers. Plessy’s act of civil disobedience was designed to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, one of the many Jim Crow laws that threatened the freedoms gained by blacks after the Civil War. This largely forgotten case mandated separate-but-equal treatment and established segregation as the law of the land. It would be fifty-eight years before this ruling was reversed by Brown v. Board of Education. Hardcover.
In June 1892, a thirty-year-old shoemaker named Homer Plessy bought a first-class railway ticket from his native New Orleans to Covington, north of Lake Pontchartrain. The two-hour trip had hardly begun when Plessy was arrested and removed from the train. Though Homer Plessy was born a free man of color and enjoyed relative equality while growing up in Reconstruction-era New Orleans, by 1890 he could no longer ride in the same carriage with white passengers. Plessy’s act of civil disobedience was designed to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act, one of the many Jim Crow laws that threatened the freedoms gained by blacks after the Civil War. This largely forgotten case mandated separate-but-equal treatment and established segregation as the law of the land. It would be fifty-eight years before this ruling was reversed by Brown v. Board of Education.