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Publication
Description
"Like the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, this book is a brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, one that provides a vivid, complex look at the multi-faceted nature of New Orleans, a city replete with contradictions. More than twenty essays assemble a chorus of vibrant voices, including geographers, scholars of sugar and bananas, the city's remarkable musicians, prison activists, environmentalists, Arab and Native voices, and local experts, as well as the coauthors' compelling contributions. Featuring 22 full-color two-page-spread maps, Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The innovative maps' precision and specificity shift our notions of the Mississippi, the Caribbean, Mardi Gras, jazz, soils and trees, generational roots, and many other subjects, and expand our ideas of how any city is imagined and experienced. Together with the inspired texts, they show New Orleans as both an imperiled city-by erosion, crime, corruption, and sea level rise-and an ageless city that lives in music as a form of cultural resistance. Compact, lively, and completely original, Unfathomable City takes readers on a tour that will forever change the way they think about place."--… (more)
User reviews
I picked up this atlas after reading (and loving) Solnit's San Francisco atlas, and I was ecstatic when I learned she recently published a similar atlas on New Orleans (with the help of Snedeker, a native New Orleansian). The maps and essays in this book were just as beautiful, vibrant, thought-provoking, moving, and eye-opening as in its predecessor; however, I thought that some of the topics were kind of repetitive, and the same issues were being brought up over and over (such as Katrina, racism, classism, and the city's history with slavery), which of course makes absolute sense, since this atlas serves as a historical and cultural guide to the city, and you can't discuss New Orleans without discussing those topics. But I guess what I felt was that this book was more depressing than the San Francisco atlas. I wish there were a few more essays/maps about the unique and colorful people, events, and places in New Orleans, rather than the tragedies and shortcomings of its history and people.
Despite my complaint, this book made me more eager than ever to go back to New Orleans, and perhaps even live there for a while. I want to experience all that the city has to offer (and the food! My God, the food!), and I feel all the more informed about the city and its people than before.