Gary Krist's Empire of Sin is an exploration of New Orleans's bad old days as a wild west style outpost of vice and damnation. The meat of the book is the thirty or so years between the Gilded Age and Prohibition when New Orleans was the original good times city, a hotbed of prostitution, liquor, gambling, and - just for good measure - jazz. Here Krist presents a veritable panoply of larger-than-life characters, male and female, who figured into the scene. Readers are treated to the rise, and often fall, of many of the early jazz pioneers (fun fact: many of their nicknames and favored lingo feature in one of my son's favorite bedtime reads, Jazz Cats, acquired in NOLA when he visited earlier this year). For example, we see Louis Armstrong grown from a young boy to an acclaimed musician.
As for murder, there was, evidently, the Mafia for that. Empire of Sin opens and ends with some of the more salacious murders of the period, many of which are still officially unsolved, although Krist presents convincing arguments in the Afterward for who he believes is responsible.
Empire of Sin is fine American history, along the lines of Empire of Mud or City of Scoundrels. Those who enjoy the finer points of more obscure history will find plenty to love here.
Laissez les bons temps roulez!
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