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Gary Krist Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Gary Krist

Gary Krist

Gary Krist Biography

Gary Krist has written for the New York Times, Esquire, Salon, the Washington Post Book World, and elsewhere. He is the author of the bestselling City of Scoundrels and the acclaimed The White Cascade, as well as several works of fiction. He has been the recipient of the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.



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Interview

Gary Krist talks about Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans, how he researched the book, and why he chose Storyville, and this specific thirty year period in New Orleans' history to explore.

Q. What drew you to New Orleans as your subject?
A. I love the fact that New Orleans was the first major American metropolis to build an opera house but the last to build a sewer system. The city really was (and is) an original, arising from a confluence of ethnicities and traditions unlike that of any other city in the country. As a result, it developed a unique urban culture - not quite foreign, but not quite American either - that was particularly fascinating to me. Certainly the indulgent, cosmopolitan ethos of New Orleans was entirely different from the culture of the last place I wrote about - Chicago, a frenetic industrial giant representing the epitome of no-nonsense businesslike practicality. So that contrast is one of the things that drew me to New Orleans this time around - I wanted to see how the social, racial, and moral issues of the times played out in these two very different urban settings.

Q. New Orleans has a long and storied history. Why did you choose to home in on this particular thirty-year period of the early twentieth century?
A. I've made the Progressive Era something of a personal specialty in my recent books, mainly because I see it as a crucial age of transition, marking the beginning of ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Gary Krist at BookBrowse
Empire of Sin jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Gary Krist but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • William Dalrymple

    William Dalrymple

    William Dalrymple is the author of six previous acclaimed works of history and travel, including City of Djinns, which won the Young British Writer of the Year Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; the best-selling ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Empire of Sin

    Try:
    Nine Lives
    by William Dalrymple

  • Sheri Fink

    Sheri Fink

    Sheri Fink's reporting has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the Overseas Press Club Lowell Thomas Award, among other journalism prizes. Her coverage of Hurricanes Sandy and Isaac received the Mike ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Empire of Sin

    Try:
    Five Days at Memorial
    by Sheri Fink

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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Top Picks

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    Small Rain
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    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
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    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
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    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
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    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

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Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
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