Acadiana: Louisiana's Historic Cajun Country
''Clearly a labor of love for all those involved in its creation, this book is a masterpiece and deserves an award. To describe it as simply a coffee table book would be a true injustice. Carl Brasseaux has written a masterful history of Acadiana--sympathetic, yet unsentimental--and Philip Gould has provided photographs that are breathtakingly beautiful, evocative and as instructive as the text. Brasseaux's narrative, with its graceful prose and deep scholarship, takes the reader from the earliest native-French interactions to the most recent oil spill. His text traces the true complexity of the region. History and myth are delineated with a sure hand so that even the most casual reader will quickly understand that the very concept of 'Acadiana' is a historical construct, shaped, in part, by Dolores del Rio and the 1929 filmEvangelineand local politicians in the 1970s.Acadiana,like the region it honors, is a treasure. For anyone who loves Louisiana, this is a book you must own.'' --Jay Gitlin, author ofThe Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders and American ExpansionThis is certainly one of the best books about Louisiana to be published in a very long time. Cumulatively, it might be the best book ever about the complex and enigmatic place we now call Acadiana. --The Advocate(Baton Rouge)