All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival

A study of 200 years of carnival history in one particular locality, such as Mitchell's, is an opportunity for close inspection of the dialectics between carnival and context, as well as an exploration of more general significances of carnival which can be apprehended only over the longue duree…Of particular interest are the descriptions of developments and transformations which were introduced into the Mardi Gras celebrations during the post-Civil War period-an era of emancipation, confederate defeat, political empowerment of blacks, and economic distress…The last chapters of the book deal with more recent shifts in the carnival celebrations and significances, especially as shaped through ongoing transformations in the status of women and blacks. A long-time arena for a display of male dominance and men's appropriation of women's youth and sexuality, the New Orleans carnival came to provide, in the 1920s, a stage for women's independent sexuality, and an opportunity to [parody] a man's world…Mitchell's book is rich in details and insights. It creates both an intimate acquaintance with New Orleans, as well as a sense of the intricacies of economic and political processes, and the complexities of their symbolic articulation…The book is thus (happily) played by its subject matter. Rather than just a book about carnival, the author also creates a carnival specimen. However, this blurring of genres, this "live performance" of the text, turns the book into a convincing and artistic demonstration of that which is left unexplained. --Yoram S. Carmeli (Cultural Dynamics ) Tracing over 150 years of Mardi Gras celebrations, Reid Mitchell illuminates successive attempts to redefine the city and the urban public in New Orleans...Mitchell has given us an intriguing social history of the city, imaginatively using newspaper accounts and memoirs to uncover who was mixing with whom and when...This book is fun to read, and Mitchell makes superb use of written sources to bring his episodes alive for the reader (American Historical Review ) All on a Mardi Gras Day is a fine piece of scholarship, and Mitchell makes a compelling argument that the history of New Orleans can be tellingly glimpsed through a study of its celebrated holiday. --Fredrick Barton (Journal of American History ) In this fascinating and perceptive study of the rituals and meanings of New Orleans' most famous 'civic ritual'--Mardi Gras--Reid Mitchell stresses the themes of continuity and change which have reflected consensus and conflict within the Crescent City's polyglot community from the 1850s to the present...This is social history at its best...engaging, innovative and instructive. --John White (American Studies in Europe )

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