"Historic Baton Rouge is remarkably well-researched, thoughtful, and fairminded. Sylvia Frank Rodrigue and Faye Phillips manage to compress a wide range of valuable information into one careful, comprehensive, readable little volume. Whereas much Louisiana history tends to be an extended view of what happened in New Orleans, this study places Baton Rouge in its rightful place as the state's interesting capital, a vibrant city with its own problems, personality, and achievements. . . . This succinct book is a most worthy contribution to the state's history."
- Christina Vella, author of Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba
"If history is a way by which a civilization talks to itself about itself, then this book speaks volumes about the city of Baton Rouge. The circuitous route which Baton Rouge has traveled to become the metropolis that it now is, is all there--warts and all. Painstakingly researched, the data is presented in such a way as to make reading of it a pleasure. Thus, we might all read this work with profit and enjoyment."
- Huel D. Perkins, Retired LSU Administrator
"Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History proves a worthy successor and much-needed revision to Rose Myers's A History of Baton Rouge: 1699-1812 and to both editions of Mark T. Carleton's classic River Capital: An Illustrated History of Baton Rouge. The authors bring their considerable personal and professional talents to choose, consider, write, illustrate, and reveal the content, context, and controversies of local history. Their fearlessly handled treatment of the modern era, usually concealed behind city-parish boosterism, should win them a place in the hearts and minds (and on the bookshelves and coffee tables) of Baton Rouge."
- Charles N. Elliott, Department of History and Political Science, Southeastern Louisiana University
Mary Evelyn Dickerson Parker, Eugenia Kennon, Sarah A. Kors / Courtesy of The Register records, LLMVC, LSU Libraries
