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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Oct 2014, 432 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2015, 432 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Rory L. Aronsky
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From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans' other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City
Empire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans' thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city's elite "better half" against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.
Excerpt
Empire of Sin
It was, in many respects, the most brutal assault so far: a two-year-old child killed instantly by a single blow to the skull; her critically injured parents rendered senseless by multiple head traumas. Clotted gore soaked the bed where they all lay. Across the walls and curtains around them, blood spatters radiated like birdshot. And yet, despite this evidence of what must have been a savage frenzy of violence, no one in the neighborhood had heard a thing. The perpetrator had been able to escape without a single witness to the crime, and with hours to spare before his deed was detected. The axman was apparently becoming even more adept at his trade with time.
The crime had been discovered at about seven o'clock on a Sunday morning. Several neighbors had made earlier visits to the grocery, which usually opened at five a.m., and had merely walked away when they found it closed. But one little girl named Hazel Johnson was more persistent. After getting no ...
Empire of Sin is a swift, breathtaking read that adds more depth to the history of early New Orleans for those already familiar with it, and tidal waves of emotion for whom it is new...continued
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(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
Nestled on page 69 of Empire of Sin is a surprising blink-and-you-might-miss-it sentence in parentheses: "Spain did, however, rebuild much of the central city after two devastating fires, which is why the architecture of the French Quarter is actually Spanish."
In 1718, John Law, a Scottish financier who had established a private bank in France two years earlier, established a "burg" at France's request to be called New Orleans. Jean Baptiste Bienville, a French Canadian naval officer who was also the governor for Law's Company of the Indies, created a military-style grid of seventy squares that would become the French Quarter. Of the original French Quarter, the layout of the streets and central square remain, as well as the ...
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