New Orleans: A Recipe For Cultural Gumbo

You can go to a place and fall in love with it but never really know much about the many layers of history that formed it.

On the surface, New Orleans, to most tourists, represents food, drink and music, and not necessarily in that order.

Ned Sublette fills in the blanks, weaving a history that tells how the city we know as the Big Easy came to be so special.

A music expert, he explains how the many cultures through the centuries - French, French Canadian, Cajun, Creole, African (representing many areas of that continent), Caribbean, Spanish and others - all brought to New Orleans the music of their homelands.

This gumbo of cultures, as he calls it, also resulted in the city's food, spirit and population.

With great detail and talented telling, Sublette especially chronicles the paths slaves took to New Orleans and how those paths led to the city's personality today.

He offers so many interesting tidbits, they alone are worth reading his book. For instance: Only one building - radically changed - is left from the time the French built the French Quarter. Only 38 buildings date to the time the Spanish ruled the city. The others were built after 1803.

All the interesting insights that create his tapestry will surely prompt those who read it to want to return to New Orleans, knowing so much more than they did before.