Written by the Mayor of New Orleans, this book looks forward as well as backward in time. It tackles the broad legacies of slavery, race, and inequality that still bedevil America. Landrieu recounts his own relationship to this history with insight. He grew up with a progressive education in a racially divided city, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened. His father, a state legislator and then mayor, was a huge force in the intergration of New Orleans in the 1960's and 1970's. Early in his career, Landieu took on David Duke in the state legislature. He became a catalyst in the historic recovery of his hometown after Hurricane Katrina, a time that had its own troubling racial component. As mayor, he deals with poverty and urban violence daily in a city that is one of the world's cultural treasures.