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Spectacular Wickedness
- Sex, Race, and Memory in Storyville, New Orleans
- Narrated by: Lee Ann Howlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's summary
From 1897 to 1917 the red-light district of Storyville commercialized and even thrived on New Orleans' longstanding reputation for sin and sexual excess. This notorious neighborhood, located just outside of the French Quarter, hosted a diverse cast of characters who reflected the cultural milieu and complex social structure of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, a city infamous for both prostitution and interracial intimacy. In particular, Lulu White, a mixed-race prostitute and madam, created an image of herself and marketed it profitably to sell sex with light-skinned women to white men of means.
In Spectacular Wickedness, Emily Epstein Landau examines the social history of this famed district within the cultural context of developing racial, sexual, and gender ideologies and practices. In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which, when challenged by New Orleans' Creoles of color, led to the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, constitutionally sanctioning the enactment of separate but equal laws. Landau reveals how Storyville's salacious and eccentric subculture played a significant role in the way New Orleans constructed itself during the New South era.
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To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: He was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.
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Fascinating Tale of Racial Passing
- By Steven Schuster on 06-10-16
By: Karl Jacoby
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An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
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I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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With élan and erudition - and with winning enthusiasm - Henry Louis Gates Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Rogers' work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African American history in question-and-answer format. Among the 100 questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry?
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great book
- By Anthony Costello on 06-14-18
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Sundown Towns
- A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
- By: James Loewen
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Sundown Towns examines thousands of all-white American towns that were - and still are, in some instances - racially exclusive by design.
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Honest Reportage on American Racial's Shame
- By Anonymous User on 12-26-08
By: James Loewen
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The Accommodation
- The Politics of Race in an American City
- By: Jim Schutze, John Wiley Price
- Narrated by: Mike Rhyner, John Wiley Price
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The powerful, long-repressed classic of Dallas history that examines the violent and suppressed history of race and racism in the city. Written by longtime Dallas political journalist Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer and currently columnist at D Magazine, The Accommodation follows the story of Dallas from slavery through the civil rights movement and the city’s desegregation efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s.
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Floored
- By Anthony on 09-16-22
By: Jim Schutze, and others
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Gotham
- A History of New York City to 1898
- By: Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 67 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
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THANK YOU!!!!!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 09-29-18
By: Edwin G. Burrows, and others
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Stony the Road
- Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A profound new rendering of the struggle by African Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind.
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Valuable examination of Jim Crow and Rise of White Supremacy in America
- By William J Brown on 05-14-19
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No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
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My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
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Five Points
- The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.
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Great historical piece
- By Jim Braunstein on 08-19-19
By: Tyler Anbinder
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The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
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US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
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Last Call
- The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.
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Very Thorough Historical Review
- By Pierre on 11-12-12
By: Daniel Okrent
What listeners say about Spectacular Wickedness
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Midwestbonsai
- 02-02-16
Spectacular Wickedness is fascinating
The only book I have ever encountered before about Storyville was The Girl From Storyville by Frank Yerby, published in 1972. As I listened to Spectacular Wickedness, I was struck by how accurate of a picture Yerby had portrayed in his novel. Emily Epstein Landau introduces us to the real Storyville.
New Orleans had a reputation for being a city of sin from it’s earliest days. Landau traces how this reputation was earned in each incarnation of the city. From the French, Creoles, and Americans, as New Orleans changed hands, it did not change its reputation. In 1897, the city passed a zoning code establishing a red light district in the hope of containing the vice to one area. The hope was if the vice was contained, visitors would see more of the honest hard working community and attract more business. This red light district became Storyville and for almost twenty years it was the wildest red light district in the country.
Landau explores the history of Storyville through primary source documentation from individuals from all points of the social and economic spectrum. The most important business in Storyville was sex. There were closet sized bordellos and very fancy upscale bordellos. The women who worked there were members of all races as were their customers. The major difference was while the sex workers may be of several different races within a bordello, the clientele would only be white or non-white. The rules concerning races were less stringent in Storyville then outside the red light district. That all changed with the advent of Jim Crow laws due to the Supreme Court ruling on Plessy vs. Ferguson which started in the New Orleans courts. Another area Landau explores is how Storyville was an incubator for Jazz. Many great jazz musicians began their careers playing at the bars, clubs or bordellos in Storyville. Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton are just two of these greats who worked there.
Lee Ann Howlett does a good job narrating Spectacular Wickedness. The subject matter is complex and dense at times. Her voice is pleasant and never goes to monotone. Her narration reminded me of a good college professor. It is similar to listening to a very good lecture.
Spectacular Wickedness is fascinating. Ms. Howlett does a fine job with it. The only reason I rated it as 4 stars for attention holding is because of the complexity of the information. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look at a familiar topic through a new perspective.
Audiobook was provided for review the narrator.
Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog
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15 people found this helpful
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- Deanna duPont
- 05-17-23
Very good
I liked it. Told very well and shows both good and bad of the past
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1 person found this helpful
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- Laura
- 09-22-15
good book
"I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast dot com.”
i really enjoyed this book
very informative
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- Shoshana Hathaway
- 11-01-15
The "wrong" side of town
This is a fascinating, extremely disturbing sociological study, which has been written for a nonacademic audience. As with most books from University Press, the presentation is excellent in all ways.
This book openly discusses sexual matters, although it is not in the least salacious. What disturbed me most, I think, was confronting directly, by reading about it, the history of post Civil War white supremacy. Again, the author takes an objective and no holds barred look at this phenomenon, and, perhaps, it is that very objectivity which unsettled me so much.
But this is also a wonderful story about a time, place, and a thorough guided tour of one of the most famous “red light” districts in the country, and much of it was delightfully colorful and completely intriguing. Of course, I’ve always known about such districts, and, being raised in Baltimore (which had its own famous one), I had always been a bit curious. This book more than satisfied that passing curiosity.
The writing is accessible, vivid and readable, and the narration was professional and adequate to the needs of the book.
I received this book in exchange for this unbiased review via the courtesy of AudioBookBlast dot com.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Erin
- 12-31-15
Interesting read-detailed history not overwhelming
Spectacular Wickedness challenges the history you believe you know of the founding of the jazz era in Storyville district of New Orleans. Landau outlines how the ideals of masculinity held during slavery carried over into the turn of the century contributing to the extraordinary culture New Orleans is known for. These ideals combined with separate but equal laws and city officials desire to attract people to the city created a unique culture in Storyville. Racism and sexism runs rampant. These same elements resulted in the decline of the very culture they created 20 years later.
Storyville was known for its sex trade – specifically its trade of light skinned black women to wealthy white men. Lulu White was a well know madam in the midst of it all. Lulu was able to take advantages of this culture to become a successful entrepreneur in a time where there was little opportunity for black women. Landau paints the portrait of an interesting woman misinterpreted (or forgotten) by history.
Very interesting read. Detailed history but not overwhelming. The audiobook narrator was a perfect fit for this book.
I received this book in exchange for this unbiased review via the courtesy of AudioBookBlast dot com.
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- Michael
- 02-28-16
Good history of New Orleans 1800-1920
I grew up on the Westbank and downloaded this hoping to find out a little more about the hometown.
Not only does the book cover Storyville, but it lays out much of the race relations and history of NOLA in the hundred years preceding it. Jazz is a side item in the book as it focuses more on prostitution and efforts to control it at the turn of the century.
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3 people found this helpful
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- ginger
- 08-22-16
Native New Orleanian
Would you consider the audio edition of Spectacular Wickedness to be better than the print version?
Since, I live in New Orleans, personally I feel reading it would be better. This is only because Lee Ann Howlett is not from here and does not know how to pronounce the street names. For me it was like nails on a chalkboard. For the person outside of New Orleans, you will never notice. Beware if you come visit and want to see some of these streets, you may be saying them wrong if you follow Lee Ann's pronunciation and will be corrected fast. Not in an mean way but in a city pride way. As the book explains, we were founded by the French, and we say things much differently.
Who was your favorite character and why?
New Orleans is always my favorite character in a historic book.
Did Lee Ann Howlett do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Yes.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes
Any additional comments?
For any historical book about New Orleans, It would be a great idea to hire someone to read the book from this area. The street names are mispronounced in most books about New Orleans. For example: Conti does not rhyme with tea and have the emphasis on CON. The way the say it here rhymes with tie and the emphasis is on the second syllable.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Matthew Vallee
- 09-23-17
A classic!
Sometimes when you read books and history, they are rather dull. This book not only brought the his street but really brought the narrative too really have you empathize with the individuals involved in what was called the Storyville.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Donna
- 05-17-18
GREAT
If you can ignore the references to white privileged and opinion and stick to the history and facts -- great book. I don't feel the author has a personal history in New Orleans. But overall it's worth the listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Deedra
- 11-03-16
SpecacularWickedness
This was a good read.Lee Ann Howlett narrates it nicely.This is the story of how Storyville came to be and how it was both legal and illegal.Its the story of racism in New Orleans and how it was normalized to suit the people who wanted to get around it.I was given this book free for an honest review.
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2 people found this helpful