This was an excellent history of New Orleans centering around Storyville and the Italian and African American prejudices of the time. Spiced with the story of jazz and the bad reputation that was assigned to this truly American music this book is a page turner. Written more like a novel than a history; the book describes a variety of crimes and leads us through the events and people associated with these event and allows the reader to make discoveries within the text, but never before it is appropriate.
Madams, musicians, and politicians all have their roles here. The Black Hand of the Italians, Jim Crow leveraged against the blacks, and, always, the moralizing groups who want to impose their gods and their false set of standards on others appear throughout the book.
There is the tension between those who seek pleasure and those who would deny it. Between those who are coerced and those who make choices. It is a morality play with lots of stories to test our sense of what is right and what is wrong.
Larger than life characters emerge and carry us through the various threads and lead us to ask what if?
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