Paul E. Hoffman’s Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1860–1919 is a highly detailed analysis of LSU’s beginnings and early development, starting well before it first opened its doors in Pineville, Louisiana, in 1860. Hoffman reveals how political and ideological contests in areas of governance, curriculum, finances, discipline (the “military feature”), and student life influenced the early identity and development of the school, shaping and laying the groundwork for the university we recognize today. The institution's first name—the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy—reflected its contested character: part imitation of the Virginia Military Institute, part true military academy, and part classical college. The school was renamed Louisiana State University in 1870 after graduating its first class. When the land-grant university created at New Orleans in 1874 merged with LSU in 1877, the school became Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. The new disagreements about the character of the institution did not resolve until 1919. At the turn of the twentieth century, new challenges led to the establishment of a law school, the admittance of women for the first time, the organization of the institution into distinct colleges, and demands to emphasize on-campus agricultural instruction. Hoffman shows that President Thomas D. Boyd, faced with flat, inadequate state funding for the university as a whole, moderated those demands until 1918. Then the wartime emphasis on agricultural production, various federal programs that encouraged enrollment in LSU’s College of Agriculture, and a critical shortage of space on the downtown campus worked together to prompt the purchase of Gartness Plantation, the site of the current campus, but without any funds or immediate plans for its development. Hoffman’s study ends in the spring of 1919. By then, the school had largely resumed its prewar rhythms in academic and extracurricular areas. The ROTC program, begun in 1917, was again in place, transforming LSU into the “Ole War Skule” of living memory. With most of its struggles over its identity resolved, LSU was poised to resume the growth that World War I had interrupted and that, with the development of the “new” campus, would characterize the school during the next twenty years of its history. This first fully documented history of LSU in its early years contributes to a broader understanding of the growth of both LSU itself and American higher education, showing how fiscal realities and contested ideas about higher education during the post–Civil War era shaped university development.

In September 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, journalists from the Times-Picayune and WWL-TV asked for and received assistance from LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication. The staff of the Times-Picayune used the School's computer labs to publish an online edition of the paper within hours of their arrival and a print edition just five days after the storm. WWL-TV reporters set up shop in the School's television facility and were on the air a few hours later, telling Katrina's story. What happened at the Manship School during that September week affirmed the ascendancy of this illustrious program. From a single journalism course offered during the 1912--1913 session, the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication has a long, rich tradition of excellence. In The Manship School, Ronald Garay, a longtime faculty member and former associate dean, traces not only the story of the Manship School but its role in the evolution of media education in general. Hugh Mercer Blain, a professor in the English department at LSU in the early 1900s, created the first LSU journalism courses and curriculum with the support of then LSU president Thomas Boyd, making LSU one of the first universities to offer journalism education. Garay describes Blain's efforts to structure a fledgling journalism department and his success in gaining national recognition for what soon would become the LSU School of Journalism and later the Manship School of Mass Communication. Garay chronicles the subsequent building of full-fledged journalism units in liberal arts colleges; the addition of new fields such as broadcasting, advertising, public relations, and political communication; the creation of doctoral programs; and the emergence of serious research on the impact of media on society. Throughout, Garay introduces the students, faculty, directors, and alumni who played important roles in the school's history -- including pioneer political consultant Raymond Strother, former Associated Press head Wes Gallagher, and Reader's Digest chairman and former CEO Thomas Ryder -- and details the evolution of LSU's student media, particularly The Reveille, KLSU-FM, and Tiger-TV. The book also describes the Manship School's emergence as an independent college at LSU and Dean John Maxwell Hamilton's role in re-orienting the School's intellectual and professional mission, raising the School's stature and visibility nationally, and incorporating state-of-the-art technology in classrooms and labs. The Manship School provides a valuable and comprehensive record of one of LSU's most distinguished units.

Louisiana State University began in 1860 as a small, all-male military school near Pineville. The institution survived the Civil War, Reconstruction politics, and budgetary difficulties to become a nationally and internationally recognized leader in research and teaching. A devastating fire destroyed the campus in 1869, and the school moved to Baton Rouge, where it has remained. Successive moves to larger campuses in 1887 and 1925 created greater opportunities in academics, student life, and athletics. Academics began with classical and engineering courses. New majors in the arts, literature, engineering, agriculture, and the sciences evolved, along with research in those fields. Student life changed from military regimentation to coeducation and students freedom to live off campus and make their own decisions. Intercollegiate athletics began in 1893 with baseball and football games against Tulane, and the LSU Tigers have since won numerous championships. These evolutionary steps all helped to create Louisianas flagship university.

Reissued for the first time in over thirty years, Black New Orleans explores the twenty-year period in which the city’s black population more than doubled. Meticulously researched and replete with archival illustrations from newspapers and rare periodicals, John W. Blassingame’s groundbreaking history offers a unique look at the economic and social life of black people in New Orleans during Reconstruction. Not a conventional political treatment, Blassingame’s history instead emphasizes the educational, religious, cultural, and economic activities of African Americans during the late nineteenth century. “Blending historical and sociological perspectives, and drawing with skill and imagination upon a variety of sources, [Blassingame] offers fresh insights into an oft-studied period of Southern history. . . . In both time and place the author has chosen an extraordinarily revealing vantage point from which to view his subject. ”—Neil R. McMillen, American Historical Review

Joseph Arthur Simon’s The Greatest of All Leathernecks is the first comprehensive biography of John Archer Lejeune (1867–1942), a Louisiana native and the most innovative and influential leader of the United States Marine Corps in the twentieth century. As commandant of the Marine Corps from 1920 to 1929, Lejeune reorganized, revitalized, and modernized the force by developing its new and permanent mission of amphibious assault. Before that transformation, the corps was a constabulary infantry force used mainly to protect American business interests in the Caribbean, a mission that did not place it as a significant contributor to the United States defense establishment. The son of a plantation owner from Pointe Coupee Parish, Lejeune enrolled at Louisiana State University in 1881, aged fourteen. Three years later, he entered the U.S. Naval Academy, afterward serving for two years at sea as a midshipman. In 1890, he transferred to the Marines, where he ascended quickly in rank. During the Spanish-American War, Lejeune commanded and landed Marines at San Juan, Puerto Rico, to rescue American sympathizers who had been attacked by Spanish troops. A few years later, he arrived with a battalion of Marines at the Isthmus of Panama—part of Colombia at the time—securing it for Panama and making possible the construction of the Panama Canal by the United States. He went on to lead Marine expeditions to Cuba and Veracruz, Mexico. During World War I, Lejeune was promoted to major general and given command of an entire U.S. Army division. After the war, Lejeune became commandant of the Marine Corps, a role he used to develop its new mission of amphibious assault, transforming the corps from an ancillary component of the U.S. military into a vibrant and essential branch. He also created the Marine Corps Reserve, oversaw the corps’s initial use of aviation, and founded the Marine Corps Schools, the intellectual planning center of the corps that currently exists as the Marine Corps University. As Simon masterfully illustrates, the mission and value of the corps today spring largely from the efforts and vision of Lejeune.