Why You'll Love This
New Orleans in 1900 was essentially a city-state run by a brothel czar — and that's just where the story starts.
- Great if you want: narrative history that reads like a sprawling crime novel
- The experience: richly atmospheric and propulsive — Storyville feels viscerally alive
- The writing: Krist weaves multiple storylines with the confidence of a seasoned novelist
- Skip if: you prefer tight focus — the cast of characters is vast
About This Book
At the turn of the twentieth century, New Orleans was a city at war with itself — a place where brothels operated as open businesses, jazz was born in the back rooms of saloons, and a Mafia assassination triggered one of the most explosive racial and civic crises in American history. Gary Krist plunges into this volatile world through Tom Anderson, the self-made boss of Storyville, the city's infamous legalized vice district, who spent decades holding together an empire built on compromise, corruption, and raw ambition. The real stakes aren't just Anderson's survival — they're the soul of a city torn between its appetite for sin and its hunger for respectability.
What makes this book work is Krist's ability to balance sprawling social history with propulsive narrative momentum. He manages multiple storylines — reformers, madams, musicians, mobsters, politicians — without losing the thread, and his prose stays sharp and grounded throughout. Rather than treating this era as colorful backdrop, he treats it as a genuine moral contest, giving the period its full weight and contradiction. Readers who love history that reads like a novel will find this one difficult to put down.