Nolalit Book Club

Join the book club for a discussion of The Great New Orleans Kidnapping by Michael Ross at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 8, at The Columns Hotel (3811 St. Charles).

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping investigates the 1870 newspaper article about the “voodoo abduction” or a white toddler by two mysterious black women. Michael Ross retells the real story of a black detective, an 1870 trial and a big what-if in the era of Reconstruction.

Michael A. Ross is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is a specialist in American Constitutional History, U.S. Nineteenth Century History, and the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. His first book, Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court During the Civil War Era (LSU, 2003), was a biography of one of the most important justices on the post-bellum Supreme Court. His second book, The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era (Oxford UP, 2014), won the 2014 Kemper Williams Prize and the 2015 New Orleans Public Library Choice Award for Non-Fiction and was a selection of the History Book Club.

Professor Ross has also published articles in American Nineteenth-Century History, Civil War History, Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Southern History, and other periodicals. Four of those articles won prizes including the Southern Historical Association’s Fletcher M. Green and Charles Ramsdell Award. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Supreme Court History and has served as historical adviser to the United States Mint. He was twice delivered Silverman lectures at the United States Supreme Court.