Although sometimes read like a piece of economic, social, intellectual, and cultural history, Moyer's book is not meant to be a comprehensive history of early American New Orleans, but an individual perception of New Orleans, a very personal description of what Jean Boze,a foreigner in the Crescent City, saw and wrote about during the 1820s and 1830s. The reader will follow him in his wanderings through the city's history, and learn about early New Orleans within the context of the early nineteenth century Atlantic space.