Landrieu retraces his own political and personal life from the days when his father was mayor of New Orleans to his own ascendance to the mayorship and his decision to take down Confederate statues in the city. Landrieu narrates with a steady and consistent cadence throughout the production. His raspy timbre and friendly tone invite listeners in as he comes to grapple with the history of the South, white supremacy, and decisions that resulted in threats to himself, his family, and friends. Landrieu shows listeners that doing right may not be easy but that, in the end, just causes are necessary to uphold the virtues of one’s city, state, and country. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

One of Time magazine's “Best Memoirs of 2018” 
Featured in Newsweek's "50 Coolest Books to Read This Summer"
Included in Esquire's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2018"

“[Mitch Landrieu] has done something, in his speech and his book, that other politicians should emulate. He’s tried to reckon with America’s sins while offering an optimistic, big-hearted and deeply patriotic defense of cosmopolitanism as the source of American greatness.”—The New York Times

“[A] thought-provoking piece of political writing...Uncomfortable as it might be to think of our country’s history...we have to do so, if we want to live within the truth. Landrieu has shown the way.”—The Washington Post

"Landrieu is an example of a politician who acknowledges that America’s past isn’t pretty, but he’s also working to shift a damaged culture that he feels has been ignored for too long. This is an inspiring tale that is both political and personal — urging readers to understand the country’s past and the work that is needed to change the present."—Time

"[A] compelling reconsideration of what it means to be a Southerner in contemporary America."—Esquire.com

"A powerful manifesto."—Newsweek

"A powerful, welcome manifesto in the cause of a new and better South—and a 'better America.'"—Kirkus Reviews

"[A] timely message of racial reconciliation."—National Journal

"Mitch Landrieu takes us on an extraordinarily powerful journey that is both political and personal. With a balance of humility and conviction, he recounts his path to a more profound understanding of racial justice and explains how this journey led him to remove the Confederate monuments in New Orleans. It’s an important book for everyone in America to read, because it shows how intellectual honesty can lead to moral clarity." —Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo Da Vinci and Steve Jobs
 

Praise for Mitch Landrieu and his May 2017 speech:

“The masterpiece we needed at the moment we needed it” —The New York Times

“A remarkably compelling speech about race in America...stunningly eloquent” —CNN

“Evocative” —POLITICO Magazine

“Courageous, controversial and frankly long overdue” —US News & World Report

“Eloquence, power and humility” —Chicago Tribune

Landrieu retraces his own political and personal life from the days when his father was mayor of New Orleans to his own ascendance to the mayorship and his decision to take down Confederate statues in the city. Landrieu narrates with a steady and consistent cadence throughout the production. His raspy timbre and friendly tone invite listeners in as he comes to grapple with the history of the South, white supremacy, and decisions that resulted in threats to himself, his family, and friends. Landrieu shows listeners that doing right may not be easy but that, in the end, just causes are necessary to uphold the virtues of one’s city, state, and country. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

2018-02-05
"Has the white South truly reckoned with the Civil War?" The mayor of New Orleans, scion of an old progressive family, writes of the controversy surrounding his city's removal of monuments to the Confederacy.Landrieu acquired national renown during the fraught post-Charlottesville spring of 2017 when he delivered a reasoned if quietly defiant speech about the reasons that New Orleans decided to remove four Confederate monuments, a decision that "wasn't sitting well with some of the powerful business interests in the state." In fact, some of the contractors who bid to do the removal work came under the threat of death, even as inflamed neo-Confederates and their allies protested what Landrieu defended as the prerogative of a democratically elected city government. That opposition, the author unhesitatingly declares, represents institutionalized racism: "You may have the law on your side, but if someone else controls the money, the machines or the hardware you need to make your new law work, you are screwed." African-Americans, he adds, know all about this perversion of justice, but it's an eye-opener for others who have not experienced that update of the peculiar institution. The statues—of Robert E. Lee, Pierre Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and the "Reconstruction-era organization of racial militants" called the White League—may disappear, but the attitudes of those defending them will take longer to erase, particularly given the intransigent leadership of people like David Duke. Landrieu charts his family's long history of racial fairness; his father, as he recalls, "voted against twenty-nine Jim Crow laws at the [Louisiana] legislature in 1960," falling afoul of the segregationist leadership. The author concludes by noting that while the tide seems to be turning, the conflict endures, with "domestic terrorism" afoot as "part of the ho-hum racism that eats through our country every day."A powerful, welcome manifesto in the cause of a new and better South—and a "better America."