Rare and vivid evidence of the thriving business of pleasure.
From 1897 to 1917, prostitution operated legally in a district of New Orleans known as Storyville. Beautifully produced by the Historic New Orleans Collection, this abundantly illustrated history of turn-of-the-century prostitution offers an unusual and fascinating glimpse into America’s past.
An authoritative, illuminating introduction by librarian and rare books curator Arceneaux explains the significance of Blue Books, directories to the licentious pleasures of Storyville. Addressed to the white, middle-class men who frequented the district, Blue Books were sold at venues such as saloons and barbershops; because of the Comstock Act (1873), material deemed lewd could not be sent through the mail. Without directly mentioning sex, the Blue Books listed and advertised beer houses, speak-easies, and bordellos, providing rosters of madams and prostitutes by name, address, and race: C (colored), W (white), and O (Octoroon, one-eighth black). Some books identified Jewish prostitutes with J; “first class bordellos” rated a star. Advertisements highlighted the brothels’ luxurious features: expensive furniture, pricey paintings, and refined, elegant women eager to offer diversions such as musical entertainment. One madam, “a head-liner among those who keep first-class octoroons,” boasted about her singing ability as well as her “pretty creole damsels.” Warning that not all establishments were reputable, Blue Books aimed to set “the stranger on a proper grade or path as to where to go and be secure.” Advised a 1908 book, “when you go on a ‘lark,’ you’ll know ‘who is who’ and the best place to spend your time and money.” Temptations were many: in that year, for example, the directory listed 697 women to choose from. Along with brothel listings, readers found advertisements for liquor, cigars, and, not surprisingly, so-called cures for venereal diseases, such as “Anti-Crab Lotion” and “Hellmann’s No. 206 Mixture. A sure cure in a short time.” Now extremely fragile, the books have been digitized for examination at the Historic New Orleans Collection website.
Rare and vivid evidence of the thriving business of pleasure.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-917860-73-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: The Historic New Orleans Collection
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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