It
was April 16, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter
from Birmingham Jail, including the line, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere.” This week marks the 50th anniversary and the
city of Birmingham, the Birmingham Library and the Terrebonne Parish Library
are hosting events that include the reading of King’s letter, to name a few.
In
Houma, there will be a brown bag lunch from noon to 1 p.m. in the outdoor
atrium of the Main Library. Some books to consider reading include “Why We
Can’t Wait” by King (Penguin), which recounts the Birmingham campaign and
discusses why 1963 was a crucial year for the Civil Rights Movement.
A
new book available from LSU Press is James P. Marshall’s “Student Activism and
Civil Rights in Mississippi,” which tells the complete story of the quest for
civil rights in Mississippi. Marshall is a former Civil Rights activist, an
independent scholar and former non-resident fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois
Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Turley to speak
John
Turley will speak about the Deepwater Horizon Macondo Well blowout at 6:30 p.m.
April 17 at Lafayette’s South Regional Branch Library.
Turley studied BP’s Macondo blowout to document the drilling of the 3 1/2-mile-deep well and the sequence of events that caused the catastrophe. The presentation will include time for questions.
Turley studied BP’s Macondo blowout to document the drilling of the 3 1/2-mile-deep well and the sequence of events that caused the catastrophe. The presentation will include time for questions.
Turley
is a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, University of Miami and Harvard
Business School. He worked in petroleum engineering for Phillips Petroleum,
Fluor Ocean Services, Tenneco Oil Company and as a professor at Marietta
College. He was the Gulf Coast drilling manager, U.K. operations manager and
manager of worldwide drilling, and VP of engineering and technology at Marathon
Oil Company.
He
is also the author of “The Simple Truth: BP’s Macondo Blowout,” a non-fiction, data-driven
book that’s presented as a novel.
Book news
At
the Louisiana Historical Association (LHA) meeting on March 22, The Historic
New Orleans Collection and the LHA chose Lawrence N. Powell’s “The Accidental
City: Improvising New Orleans” as the 2012 winner of the Kemper and Leila
Williams Prize. The prize, named for the founders of The Historic New Orleans
Collection, is offered annually, recognizing excellence in research and writing
on Louisiana history. Powell is emeritus faculty in Tulane University’s history
department and former director of the University’s New Orleans Center for the
Gulf South. He will receive a cash prize of $1,500 and a plague.
Musician
and author Zachary Richard received the James Williams Rivers Prize in
Louisiana Studies, established to honor those who have contributed or rendered
outstanding scholarly study, work or teaching about the culture, history, art,
architecture, crafts, flora, fauna, music, literature, law, performing arts or
geography of Louisiana or its people. The prize is donated in memory of Rivers,
a New Orleans architect and graduate of USL, who died in 1991. Past recipients
include George Rodrigue, James Lee Burke, Elemore Morgan, Sr. & Jr., Ernest
Gaines, Dr. Barry Ancelet, and A. Hays Town. Richard has just released a new
album titled “Le Fou” with the accompanying video “Laisse le
Vent Souffler” (“Let The Storm Winds Blow”), filmed at McGee’s Landing in the
Atchafalaya Basin.
New releases
The
Historic New Orleans Collection has published a recently discovered and
uncensored memoir of a young Frenchman and his 1729 trip to New Orleans, “A
Company Man: The Remarkable French-Atlantic Voyage of a Clerk for the Company
of the Indies.” Written for an intimate circle of friends, Marc-Antoine
Caillot’s story documents major and minor Louisiana events – from the Natchez
massacre to the first documented account of Carnival to his own pranks and
romantic escapades. The book is being released this week with a special
reception and book signing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at The Collection,
533 Royal St. in New Orleans.
In
commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, Ezra Warner’s
opus, “Generals in Blue and Generals in Gray,” is available for the first time
as a hardcover boxed set of both volumes from LSU Press. The books contain
biographical sketches and photographs of all 425 Confederate and 583 Union generals.
Former
Louisiana poet laureate Brenda Marie Osbey of New Orleans has published her fifth
collection of poetry, titled “History and Other Poems.” The book “moves from
present to past and back again to reveal the trauma of hearts and lives broken
even as it underscores the heroic endurance, resilience and agency of the
enslaved and their descendants.”
New
Orleans poet Brett Evans has released his new book from Trembling Pillow Press
titled “I Love This American Way of Life.” Evans’ work has been featured in
anthologies The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry, Another
South: Experimental Writing in the South and Poets for Living Waters and in the
biography “Ernie K-Doe: the R & B Emperor of New Orleans.”
Kid
Chef Eliana of New Orleans has been taking the world by storm, with her own
weekly radio show “Cool Kids Cook” on the Voice America Kids network and
appearing on TV and radio programs. Now, the young chef has her own cookbook,
with help from Dianne de las Cases, an award-winning author and her mom. “Cool
Kids Cook: Louisiana,” published by Pelican Publishing of New Orleans, offers
traditional Louisiana dishes that are easy enough for children to make. Each
recipe comes with a chef’s note and photos, illustrated by Soleil Lisette. It’s
a great cookbook for youth, and it doesn’t scrimp on technique nor talk down to
its audience. Kids making these recipes will end up with some fabulous dishes.
Retired
teacher and grandmother Fran Aertker Barbato of Lafayette had friends asking
for suggestions of activities to do with their grandkids. She decided to write
a book full of activities, organized into topics, that would be both fun and
educational. The result is “Grammy Frannie Fun: Do you want to spend time or
spend a fortune?,” edited by her daughter Sarah Brooks Barbato. As you may
imagine, the innovative book features creative activities where you won’t spend a fortune, but spend hours
of fun. “Granny Frannie Fun” is available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
online.
The
History Press has several new titles out about Louisiana. Patrick O’Daniel
looks at the 1927 Flood and its impact on Memphis and the Mississippi Delta in
“When the Levee Breaks: Memphis and the Mississippi Valley Flood of 1927.”
Cheryl H. White has written a biography of one of Louisiana’s most interesting
figures in “Confederate General Leonidas Polk: Louisiana’ Fighting Bishop.”
Polk was an Episcopal bishop deeply committed to the Confederacy. And Edmond
Boudreaux Jr. delves into Mississippi Coast tales, from Jean Lafitte to Barq’s
root beer in “Legends and Lore of the Mississippi Golden Gulf Coast.”
Conferences
The
16th annual Alabama Writers Symposium will be April 25-27 in
Monroeville, Ala., home to Harper Lee. Writers include Rick Bragg, Chantel
Acevedo, Marlin Barton, Cassandra King, Gay Talese (winner of the 2013 Harper
Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer), Sue Walker (winner of the 2013
Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Literary Scholar) and
many more. For information, visit www.WritersSymposium.org.
The
Winston S. Churchill Symposium on May 18 is a partnered program between The
National WWII Museum
& The Churchill Society of New Orleans and includes
several authors and scholars discussing topics relevant to the life and legacy
of Sir Winston S. Churchill. Speakers include Pulitzer Prize finalist Dr.
Michael Shelden (“Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill”); Dr.
Christopher M. Bell (“Churchill & Sea Power”), an associate professor of
military/naval history and modern English history at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Nova Scotia; Paul Reid (“The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill:
Defender of the Realm, 1940 — 1965”), the author of the third and final volume
of the trilogy begun by William Manchester, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer
Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940 — 1965” (published November 2012) and Dr.
Rob Havers (“Winston Churchill: The Iron Curtain Speech”), executive director
of the Churchill Memorial and Museum at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, where Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech. For information,
visit www.nationalww2museum.org.
Cheré Coen is the author
of “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of
“Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” She
teaches writing at UL-Lafayette’s Continuing Education. Write her at
chere@louisianabooknews.com.
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