Wayne Curtis

Wayne Curtis is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails and The Last Great Walk: The True Story of a 1909 Walk from New York to San Francisco and Why It Matters Today. He has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Imbibe, The Daily Beast, and Garden & Gun, among other publications.

Mullet Street

On New Orleans’s most famous thoroughfare, it’s always 1986

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, August 18, 2022

Decommissioning Lee

The controversial removal of a prominent New Orleans statue

by Wayne Curtis | Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Ghosts of the French Quarter

A glimpse into a literary past

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, August 06, 2015

Why the World’s Best Cocktail Is from New Orleans

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, July 16, 2015

Why the World’s Best Cocktail Is from New Orleans

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, October 01, 2015

Top Banana

When fruit was king

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, September 24, 2015

Shell-shocked

New Orleans serves history on the half shell

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, September 17, 2015

To Go Left, Turn Right

If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, September 10, 2015

And Then, Quiet

Ten years after the storm

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, September 03, 2015

Happy Talk

What did we know about joy, and when did we know it?

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, March 01, 2007

Living with Water

On Katrina’s tenth anniversary, the city enters a new relationship with water

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, August 27, 2015

Walled City

It will take more than a catastrophic storm surge to tear down these fortifications

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, August 20, 2015

Top Banana

When fruit was king

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, July 02, 2015

Everybody Scream

The return to normal

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, August 13, 2015

Clash on Neutral Ground

Sharing the roads with an alien culture

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, July 30, 2015

Man on a Pedestal

What to do about this symbol of the Confederacy?

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, July 23, 2015

Telling a Troubling Tale

The complexities of edutainment

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, July 09, 2015

To Go Left, Turn Right

If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, March 05, 2015

Shell-shocked

New Orleans serves history on the half shell

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, May 21, 2015

Sweet Recovery

How to (re)start a sugar refinery

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, June 18, 2015

Rising While Sinking

Postcards from New Orleans

by Wayne Curtis | Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Misbehaving Baldly

What’s behind the smoking ban?

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, February 05, 2015

Throws Away

Mobs, manias, and Mardi Gras

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, February 12, 2015

Day of Disbelief

A tour of Mardi Gras

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, February 19, 2015

Bridge to Somewhere

The view from the rusty rainbow

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, February 26, 2015

Clickbait History

All locked up and no place to go

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, March 12, 2015

Meet Me on the Battlefront

How dressing up as Indians connects a culture to its past

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, March 19, 2015

Get up, Get down, Turn Around

Building a post-Katrina entrepreneurial culture

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, March 26, 2015

The Super-natives Are Restless

Gentrification as civil war in New Orleans

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, May 07, 2015

Dancing in the Streets

Sending off Alfred “Bucket” Carter

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, April 02, 2015

Feral Hoggies

Barbecue invades New Orleans. Again.

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, April 09, 2015

Local Fare

Lower the portcullis. The barbarians are nigh

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, April 16, 2015

Waiting for the Gulf

The time to act was yesterday

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, April 23, 2015

Too Soon?

How “disaster humor” works

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, June 25, 2015

The Power Brokers

How New Orleans came back

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, June 11, 2015

Avoiding Summer

The annual migration north

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, June 04, 2015

Milestones

Does New Orleans have anniversary fatigue?

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, May 28, 2015

Aloft

What’s eating New Orleans?

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, May 14, 2015

JazzFest Large and Small

You may complain about what it’s become, but you needn’t look hard to find local music and culture

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, April 30, 2015

The Big Uneasy

A city’s seamy side

by Wayne Curtis | Monday, September 08, 2014

Brand-New Cities

Frank Gehry's Bilbao Effect looks a lot like 1960s-style urban renewal

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, December 01, 2005

Rum and Coca-Cola

The murky derivations of a sweet drink and a sassy World War II song

by Wayne Curtis | Thursday, June 01, 2006

The Art of Doing

Let’s give our hands a great big hand

by Wayne Curtis | Saturday, March 01, 2008

Jungle Bungle

As a rubber baron, Henry Ford was no Firestone

by Wayne Curtis | Monday, June 01, 2009