“Madame Vieux Carré is a skeleton key that unlocks the gate of every courtyard in America’s most mysterious neighborhood, exposing all of the fascinating, naughty, and complex truths hidden behind the quaint façades. With great scholoarly panache, Scott Ellis takes us on a whirlwind historical tour of the French Quarter, from teeming Sicilian slum to gentrified theme park, stopping along the way to put the saga of this self-contained village into city, state, and national perspectives. As a resident with family roots in the Quarter, I consider Madame Vieux Carré a must-read for anyone seeking to understand us beyond the tourist flimflam. It will be the definitive French Quarter history for some time to come.”

—JAMES NOLAN
Author of Perpetual Care: Stories

 
More reviews of Madame Vieux Carré:

John Sledge – The Mobile Press-Register

Robert Dupont – The Southern Quarterly, Summer 2010

Walter Pierce – The Baton Rouge Independent

“While most of the research draws from a wide collection of secondary sources, Ellis is at his strongest when he uses archival city records and his own oral histories to document the emergence of gay political identity and activism. As such, Madame Vieux Carré could be useful for any reader who is interested in urban studies, gay and lesbian studies, New Orleans politics and tourism, and of course, sex, drugs, and jazz.”
—CHARLES CHAMBERLAIN
Louisiana State University
The Journal of Southern History, Vol. LXXVII, No. 4, November 2011, p.1020-1021