Provost Award for Research and Scholarly Achievement

The Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize

Lillian Smith Book Prize

This is the story of a city that shouldn't exist. In the seventeenth century, what is now America's most beguiling metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding, infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic world.Lawrence N. Powell, a decades-long resident and observer of New Orleans, gives us the full sweep of the city's history from its founding through Louisiana statehood in 1812. We see the Crescent City evolve from a French village, to an African market town, to a Spanish fortress, and finally to an Anglo-American center of trade and commerce. We hear and feel the mix of peoples, religions, and languages from four continents that make the place electric-and always on the verge of unraveling. The Accidental City is the story of land-jobbing schemes, stock market crashes, and nonstop squabbles over status, power, and position, with enough rogues, smugglers, and self-fashioners to fill a picaresque novel.Powell's tale underscores the fluidity and contingency of the past, revealing a place where people made their own history. This is a city, and a history, marked by challenges and perpetual shifts in shape and direction, like the sinuous river on which it is perched.

The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans

New Orleans celebrates the 300th anniversary of its founding in 2018. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is proud to announce the New Orleans & The World: 1718-2018 Anthology, a collection of essays by leading scholars illuminating the role of the city in major events in U.S. and world history, the economic innovations and cultural expressions birthed in the city that impacted people around the globe, and the succeeding waves of new populations who redefined the city's shape and society. Published by the LEH in partnership the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, and the 2018 NOLA Foundation, New Orleans and the World explores the city's first three centuries through the eyes of its finest historians. Contributors include Emily Clark, Erin Greenwald, Keith Weldon Medley, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, John Shelton Reed, Sally Reeves, Daniel Usner, and Dr. Michael White, with forewords from Leah Chase and Walter Isaacson. Richard Campanella, Robert L. Dupont, Freddi Williams Evans, Alecia P. Long, Kara Tucina Olidge, and Lawrence N. Powell served as the editorial board for the book, which was edited by Nancy Dixon and Brian Boyles.

New Orleans &amp; The World: 1718-2018 Tricentennial Anthology

Get to know one of the most unique cities in the world! New Orleans is unlike anywhere else on Earth―the fusion of cultures, people, and food all establish a whole greater than its constituent parts. From migration to politics to music to ethnic culture and identity, this comprehensive volume touches on all aspects of New Orleans history for the past 300 years.   With contributions from some of the leading influencers and scholars of New Orleans cultural history, including a foreword by Professor Emeritus Lawrence N. Powell, no stone is left unturned. This is the quintessential book on New Orleans for every history buff, citizen of New Orleans, or visitor wanting to know more about who we are and how we got here.

New Orleans: The First 300 Years

This powerful work tells the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, the Holocaust survivor who transformed the horrors of her childhood into a passionate mission to defeat the political menace of reputed neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The first book to connect the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they subsequently made for themselves in the United States, Troubled Memoryis also a dramatic testament to how the experiences of survivors as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness. Perhaps the only family to survive the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a group, the Skoreckis evaded deportation to Treblinka, by posing as Aryans and ultimately made their way to New Orleans, where they became part of a vibrant Jewish community. Lawrence Powell traces the family's dramatic odyssey and explores the events that eventually triggered Anne Skorecki Levy's brave decision to honor the suffering of the past by confronting the recurring specter of racist hatred. Breaking decades of silence, she played a direct role in the unmasking and defeat of Duke during his 1991 campaign for the governorship of Louisiana.

Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Tulane University is consistently ranked among the top 50 universities in the nation. With research and educational partnerships that span the globe and its location in historic New Orleans, Tulane offers undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees in the liberal arts, science and engineering, architecture, business, law, social work, medicine and public health and tropical medicine.

Tulane University

Before his retirement, Lawrence Powell was the James H. Clark Endowed Chair in American Civilization. He specialized in Civil War and Reconstruction; Southern history; Louisiana history and politics; and the Holocaust. From 1998 to 2000 he was Director of Tulane's Campus Affiliates Program (CAP); from 2000 to 2005 he was Executive Director of the Tulane/Xavier National Center for the Urban Community.

Lawrence Powell

Media

Social

Biography

Areas of Expertise

Accomplishments

Provost Award for Research and Scholarly Achievement

The Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize

Lillian Smith Book Prize

Education

Yale University

Yale University

University of Maryland

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