A collection of very short essays (many two pages long), gravelly voiced NPR commentator Codrescu sketches finely honed portraits of a fabled city and its equally fabled inhabitants. The author, who has called the Big Easy home for two decades, shows how, like some gigantic bohemian magnet, New Orleans attracts some of the world's most talented, self-indulgent freaks.

He writes about his years on carnival krews, about hours spent prowling the French Quarter, about Marie Laveau the voodoo queen and other New Orleans characters, about food and the cemeteries where people meet as if they were parks.

It is a place where many people call the phone numbers of the dead and fully expect the deceased to answer. Yes, living with alligators is, as he says, "an acquired taste," but on the other hand, St. Charles Avenue "has to be the most charming boulevard in the world."

With Andrei Codrescu's writing, New Orleans will never be forgotten. A fabulous book about New Orleans!.

I love this book! Great to read on the plane while traveling to New Orleans.

New Orleans is a city of music, but also a city of writers, and this collection is some of the best. (via MAD)

This is a fantastic collection of stories around and about New Orleans. It is really true that when you visit the Crescent City that you will want to live there and never leave!!