New Orleans, Louisiana – WEBWIRE – Sunday, April 30, 2023
In his new book, Down on the Batture, Oliver Houck offers an extended meditation on a unique and vibrant river wilderness abutting the Mississippi River. In the book, Houck explores the lesser-known corners of the Mississippi, the batture, and the remarkable humanity that has made it their home.
From ramblers to rabbit hunters and teenage beer drinkers, to fishers and dog walkers, to sunset watchers to fugitives from alimony payments, to the haunting artwork on the sides of rusty barges, Down on the Batture tells the story of a place that is both seemingly pastoral and highly surprising. Houcks narrative includes plantations, murder, pollution, land grabs, keelboat brawlers, slave rebellions, landside casinos, and the first boxing championship on American soil.
Houck draws from his experience in New Orleans since the early 1970s in the practice and teaching of law. He has been a player in many of the issues he describes, although he does not undertake to argue them in the book. Instead, story by story, he uses the batture to explore the forces that have shaped and spell out the future of the region. The picture emerges of a place that―for all its tangle of undergrowth, drifting humanity, shifting dimensions in the rise and fall of floodwater―provides respite and sanctuary for values that are original to America and ever at risk from the homogenizing forces of civilization.
Down on the Batture is a book that will fascinate readers with its vivid portrait of a unique American landscape. It is also one that opens your eyes into a part of the world most of us didnt know exists, then helps you understand it―and everything else. And finally, it is simply a set of adventures as refreshing and insightful as an afternoon on the raft with Mark Twains Huck and Jim.
Oliver A. Houck is Emeritus Professor of law and David Boies Chair in Public Interest Law at Tulane University. He has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Environmental Section of the American Bar Association and Louisianas Conservationist of the Year. He is author of Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental Cases That Changed the World; Downstream Toward Home: A Book of Rivers; Uijongbu: A Soldiers Life in Korea; and The Court of General Sessions (his life as a federal prosecutor in Washington D.C.).His books pending publication include Waking up the Dream State (environmental litigation in Louisiana), and The Most Dangerous Branch (the United States Supreme Court).
Get your copy at https://amz.run/6Plo
Down on the Batture
Author: Oliver A. Houck
ASIN: B09LRBBDT7
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (19 April 2010)
Language: English
ISBN: 1604734612
About the Author
Oliver A. Houck is professor of law and David Boies Chair in Public Interest Law at Tulane University. He has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Environmental Section of the American Bar Association and Louisianas Conservationist of the Year. He is author of The Clean Water Act TMDL Program: Law, Policy, and Implementation; Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental Cases That Changed the World; Downstream Toward Home: A Book of Rivers; and Uijongbu: A Soldiers Life in Korea.