"Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas is a book about New Orleans, but it's also a book about the kind of shared experiences and tensions that could exist in almost any city. Twenty-two maps illustrate ancient and recent histories of the Crescent City, with local tabs that inspire hums of pride. . . . Though many of those labels are specific to New Orleans, the themes they highlight exist other places, making the book not only a local's guide to the city, but also an anthropologist's guide to the idea of metropolis."
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Gambit
"An essential introduction to NOLA."
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AFAR
"'Unfathomable City's' secret weapon is its imaginative cartography. . . . Each chart, like a plate in a restaurant, has ingredients and flavors that take the reader deep into the city's history. If you think you know these streets, this atlas will make you want to walk them again."
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San Francisco Chronicle
"A deeply illuminating assemblage of maps and essays."
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Chicago Tribune
"A vivid portrait of one of America's most culturally rich cities. More than an atlas or a travel guide, the book provides a compendium of perspectives and histories, comprised of 22 short essays and numerous colorful and beautifully illustrated companion maps. . . . A captivating read for tourists, Louisiana residents, and just about anyone looking to gain familiarity with United States history, folklore, and myth-culture." STARRED REVIEW
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Publishers Weekly
"With beautiful maps and challenging essays, Unfathomable City presents New Orleans as infinitely complex and ultimately unknowable. The result is not a comprehensive guide, but an invitation." STARRED REVIEW
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Shelf Awareness
"New Orleans natives tell the same story in boardrooms and bus stops: Their city is a puzzle wrapped in a tease, a mystery scented by sweet olive and garbage, veiled by humidity, echoing with brass bands and the occasional gunshot. That’s the mystery probed on each page of Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, the grand, map-laden anthology assembled by local filmmaker Rebecca Snedeker and the celebrated essayist and thinker Rebecca Solnit. . . . Packed with colorful maps and essays by star writers, this atlas-with-attitude encompasses second-line parades, the banana trade, bounce music, the revival along the St. Claude Avenue corridor, and conversations with such iconic musicians as George Porter Jr. and Donald Harrison Jr." TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2013 FOR NEW ORLEANS READERS
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Times-Picayune
"The maps are playful, colorful and alive―in contrast to the utility we're used to with online mapping sites and apps. They're a joy to study; New Orleanians will no doubt pore over the map depicting the ongoing revival of once moribund St. Claude Avenue and the parade routes of the city's archaic but surviving social-aid and pleasure clubs. Tourists familiarizing themselves with the city may spend more time on the "Repercussions" map, tracing jazz history and club locations, or Billy Sothern's "sites of contemplation and delight," featuring sculpture gardens, synagogues and Meyer the Hatter. . . . Ms. Solnit and Ms. Snedeker prove that atlases can still fire the imagination and incite wonder."
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Wall Street Journal
"With Unfathomable City, Solnit and Snedeker have produced an idiosyncratic, luminous tribute to the greatest human creation defined by its audience participants: the city itself."
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New York Times
"A fascinating look at New Orleans. Through 22 maps varying in their strange detail and beauty, each accompanied by an essay, Solnit and Snedeker put together a deep portrait of the city and so much of what makes it unique."
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Cleveland Plain Dealer
This series of atlases is one of my absolute favorites. Vivid, beautiful, and deceptively meaningful,
Unfathomable City successfully pushes cartographic conventions. It explores what it means to know a place, not just the street grid. A delight to behold, this is an incredible achievement rarely seen in modern cartography. --William McNulty, cartographer, former director of maps at National Geographic, former graphics editor,
New York Times
This bright, rolling river of a book carries a chorus of mapmakers, writers, and artists singing of deep memory in New Orleans. Unfathomable City is a book to cherish--and sure to be a classic. --Jason Berry, New Orleans-based journalist and coauthor of Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II
Race, space, and place: this atlas is a people's ecology of persistent resistance, an open-ended historical geography guiding toward an indomitable future--a permanent revolution no less likely than the city itself. Read this book! --Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center
From the Back Cover
"This series of atlases is one of my absolute favorites. Vivid, beautiful, and deceptively meaningful, Unfathomable City successfully pushes cartographic conventions. It explores what it means to know a place, not just the street grid. A delight to behold, this is an incredible achievement rarely seen in modern cartography." ―William McNulty, cartographer, former director of maps at National Geographic, former graphics editor, New York Times
"This bright, rolling river of a book carries a chorus of mapmakers, writers, and artists singing of deep memory in New Orleans. Unfathomable City is a book to cherish―and sure to be a classic." ―Jason Berry, New Orleans–based journalist and coauthor of Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II
"Race, space, and place: this atlas is a people’s ecology of persistent resistance, an open-ended historical geography guiding toward an indomitable future―a permanent revolution no less likely than the city itself. Read this book!" ―Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center
About the Author
Rebecca Solnit is the author of many books, including Savage Dreams, Storming the Gates of Paradise, and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, all from UC Press. Rebecca Snedeker is an Emmy Award–winning independent filmmaker and native New Orleanian.
Product details
- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (November 18, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520274040
- ISBN-13: 978-0520274044
- Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.6 x 12 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
