From December 1884 through May 1885, New Orleans hosted a now nearly forgotten international event: The World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition.Seeking to commemorate the first export of cotton from the United States in 1784, the National Cotton Planters Association selected New Orleans, the largest city in the South, as the site for the great international exposition. The citizens and business community of New Orleans, eager to promote the city's recovery from both the ravaging effects of the Civil War and the aftermath of Reconstruction, welcomed the chance to stage an event which would attract visitors and investors to the commercially revitalized city.Established in 1875, the Centennial Photographic Company of Philadelphia was granted exclusive rights to produce all photographic images of the New Orleans exposition. Included in this volume are more than 250 of those images, illustrating New Orleans and the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, all from the personal collection of Kenneth R. Speth.

A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.

A pioneering collection of recipes of New Orleans, Creole cuisine.