The Great Saloons of New Orleans Obituary Cocktail

A photographic essay and history of the great bars in New Orleans.
These saloons all played a part in New Orleans' extraordinary past and are still pulling beers or shaking cocktails today even after Katrina with one exception. The Old Absinthe House Bar, one of the last great bars on Bourbon Street and a visual feast, was gutted in October of 1997. Part of the author's desire to document these rooms came with the realization that, because the city has one foot in Colonial ruin and the other in 20th-century America, any of these structures could disappear overnight. The author, KerriMcCafferty, photographed the Old Absinthe House Bar before the destruction and included the images as a eulogy to remind us what can happen without active historic preservation.
Book of the Year 1999
..... New Orleans Gulf South Bookseller's Association
Silver Medal Winner 2002
..... Publisher's Mktg Assoc & Ind. Publ Assoc (IPPY)
"One of the year's best"
..... The New Orleans Times-Picayune
"One of the best books about the city"
..... The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans

"Like the silvered mirrors, shadowy with time, that
hang behind so many New Orleans bars, McCaffety's
book reflects the city in all its drunken splendor . . .
In perfectly chosen words and images."
..... Susan Larson, The New Orleans Times-Picayune