In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer
Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four
Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony,
attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians,
and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of
the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated,
tradition-rich splendor. In
City of a Million Dreams, Jason
Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its
tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death,
and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of
diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience
despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods.
Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the
founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to
Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere
Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition;
Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of
the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his
life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured
profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of
the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as
people dance when they bury their dead.
