Covering the lively, even raucous, history of Louisiana from before First Contact through the Elections of 2012, this sixth edition of the classic Louisiana history survey provides an engaging and comprehensive narrative of what is arguably America's most colorful state.

• Since the appearance of the first edition of this classic text in 1984, Louisiana: A History has remained the best-loved and most highly regarded college-level survey of Louisiana on the market
• Compiled by some of the foremost experts in the field of Louisiana history who combine their own research with recent historical discoveries
• Includes complete coverage of the most recent events in political and environmental history, including the continued aftermath of Katrina and the 2010 BP oil spill
• Considers the interrelationship between Louisiana history and that of the American South and the nation as a whole
• Written in an engaging and accessible style complemented by more than a hundred photographs and maps

Editors:

Bennett H. Wall (deceased) was Professor of History at the University of Georgia, and instrumental in the founding and operation of the Louisiana Historical Association and the Southern Historical Association. He was a renowned scholar in southern and U.S. business history.

John C. Rodrigue is Lawrence and Theresa Salameno Professor of History at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachusetts. He previously taught Louisiana History and other courses at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles on nineteenth-century U.S. and Southern history.

Authors:

Light Townsend Cummins is the Bryan Professor of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and a leading expert on the history of the Spanish Borderlands. In 2009 he was appointed as the official State Historian of Texas.

Judith Kelleher Schafer teaches American legal history at Tulane University and has published two prizewinning books: Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (1997) and Brothels, Depravity and Abandoned Women (2011), as well as Becoming Free, Remaining Free (2003).

Edward F. Haas is professor of history at Wright State University in Dayton Ohio. He was named a Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association, which in 1999 awarded him the Garnie McGinty Lifetime Meritorious Service Award. He has published numerous works on Louisiana and New Orleans history and has twice won the L. Kemper Williams Prize for excellence in Louisiana scholarship.

Michael L. Kurtz is Professor Emeritus of American History at Southeastern Louisiana University. His publications include Earl K. Long: The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics (1990), Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian's Perspective (1993), Louisiana Since the Longs (1998), and The JFK Assassination Debates (2006).