John Pope

Subtitle in pre-publication: A collection of obituaries from the Times-picayune.

Obituaries from the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Getting Off at Elysian Fields

Why Polls Don’t Matter In the Age of Trump

Eye for a Lie

United States. Congress. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War

United States. Army. Dept. of Virginia

Report of Major General John Pope

Programmer Martin Cardwell tends to float along, letting chance or others make his big decisions. So when the dot-com crash of the early 2000s leaves him jobless and disoriented, he looks to his charismatic childhood friend Swanson Geach, the only person around who's got life figured out. But as Swanson's big idea, a vacation rental business in Paris, goes sideways, Martin gets a sink-or-swim education - provided by the local scammers, a luminous grad student wise beyond her years, an offbeat research center, and his old friend Swanson, who seems to be coming slowly unhinged.

The One Thing Worth Doing

United States. Army. Corps of Topographical Engineers

Captain Pope, then serving with the Corps of Topographical Engineers, led an expedition that roamed the unsettled western part of Minnesota Territory from June 6 to September 27, 1849.

Report of the Secretary of War, Communicating the Report of an Exploration of the Territory of Minnesota

No city in America knows how to mark death with more funerary panache than New Orleans. The pageants commemorating departed citizens are often in themselves works of performance art. A grand obituary remains key to this Stygian passage. And no one writes them like New Orleanian John Pope. Collected here are not just simple, mindless recitations of schools and workplaces, marriages, and mourners bereft. These pieces in Getting Off at Elysian Fields are full-blooded life stories with accounts of great achievements, dubious dabblings, unavoidable foibles, relationships gone sour, and happenstances that turn out to be life-changing. To be sure, there are stories about Carnival monarchs, great philanthropists, and a few politicians. But because New Orleans embraces eccentric behavior, there are stories of people who colored way outside the lines. For instance, there was the doctor who used his plasma to make his flowers grow, and the philanthropist who took money she had put aside for a fur coat to underwrite the lawsuit that desegregated Tulane University. A letter carrier everyone loved turned out to have been a spy during World War II, and a fledgling lawyer changed his lifelong thoughts about race when he saw blind people going into a Christmas party through separate doors--one for white people and another for African Americans. Then there was the punctilious judge who got down on his hands and knees to edge his lawn--with scissors. Because New Orleans funerals are distinctive, the author includes accounts of four that he covered, complete with soulful singing and even some dancing. As a popular, local bumper sticker indisputably declares, "New Orleans--We Put the Fun in Funeral."

John Pope

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