1. To build a major publisher in New Orleans  
2. To publish books reflecting the culture and history of the South  
3. To advocate for legal rights for Southerners in the American Union, bolstered by the Constitution  
4. To support liberty over tyrannical government  

See You at the Top, Zig Ziglar's first book, began our motivational niche. He is arguably the greatest motivational figure of the twentieth century. In the tenth anniversary edition of People magazine, it was noted as the nation's sixth best-selling book of the magazine's first decade.  

Cajun Night Before Christmas changed the dynamic of Cajun culture. Before this publication, the word "Cajun" was a pejorative and not accepted. Now everyone wants to be Cajun because this book was positive and sympathetic to Cajun culture. This has spawned twenty-eight titles, with five more being added in the coming season. 
It is probably Pelican's most widely distributed series.  

Mary Alice Fontenot brought another series to us. Her Clovis Crawfish titles are children's picture books depicting the swamp's natural life. Each character has been endowed with the particular characteristics of its species. There are now nineteen titles. Although her books have not won individual awards, Mary Alice was the recipient of 
the Louisiana Lifetime Achievement Award.

James Rice, Louisiana's greatest children's illustrator, was discovered for Cajun Night Before Christmas, and by the end of his career, he had written or illustrated forty-nine books for Pelican.

We published Justin Wilson's first cookbook and introduced Cajun cooking to the United States at the American Booksellers Association meeting in Los Angeles in 1974. This later led to his national cooking show and many more cookbooks.

We introduced Creole cooking to the national scene through Leon E. Soniat Jr.'s La Bouche Creole. A national tour was planned, and Leon was slated to cook for the National Food Editors in Chicago that fall. Tragically, he died before the appearance. In answer to an urgent request for a substitute, his widow suggested Paul Prudhomme. 
He accelerated the speed of Cajun and Creole cookery.

The New Orleans Architecture Series developed out of a guidebook to help save the Lower Garden District from demolition. Originally planned as a small paperback, Pelican encouraged the authors to produce a "grand design for a grand theme." There are now eight volumes, and one volume won 
the Society of Architectural Historians' Alice Davis Hitchcock Award in 1977.

This encouraged our Majesty Architecture Series with more than twenty books on historic architecture. It began with Paul and Lee Malone's Louisiana Plantation Homes: A Return to Splendor.

In 1973, there was no place to see the work of political cartoonists except in the city where they worked. Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, edited by Charles Brooks, was established to
 
 1. Memorialize the story of the year in cartoons
 2. To showcase the variety of approach and styles of the cartoonists of America
 3. To encourage the development of young cartoonists

We have now completed thirty-eight years of this record. A high point was in 1979 when we were invited to exhibit books at the Moscow Book Fair. Knowing the book would be provocative, we sent five volumes of Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year to the fair. Premier Brezhnev promptly banned them. This led to responses in newspapers, including an article in the Paris Herald Tribune by Art Buchwald. This provoked an open letter to Soviet citizens by Pelican's publisher. The letter was published in the Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1980 Edition as a foreword; its theme was the development of civilization and self-government-the observation was made that Communism was so unsuccessful that it hadn't reached the first stage of civilization, which is to be able to feed oneself.

I was interviewed at the American Booksellers meeting, and the interview was broadcast by radio to the Soviet Union on several occasions by Voice of America. The prediction was that people cannot be enslaved forever and eventually the collection of Soviet republics would fall apart. This occurred nine years later.

Southern history and culture and national politics with a Southern viewpoint was a neglected area of publishing at that time. The South Was Right!, by Ronald and Donald Kennedy, twins who write books together, was a huge success for Pelican. It has sold over 100,000 copies and is still selling strongly. The book is a defense of the original Constitution, and the authors have become experts on the subject.

Pelican has published titles on aspects of the Civil War that have not been previously covered. Weep Not for Me, Dear Mother, by Elizabeth Whitley Roberson, is the first portrayal of the common Southern soldier's character that I have ever seen. It came about accidentally when a group of letters was found discarded on an Atlanta Street.

As the program has developed, the ferocity and viciousness of the attacks on Southern civilians by the Union army has been revealed. Some examples are in War Crimes against Southern Civilians, by Walter Brian Cisco; Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border, by Donald L. Gilmore; To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65, by George Levy; Jack Hinson's One-Man War, by Tom C. McKenney; and Andersonville: The Southern Perspective, edited by J. H. Segars.

Our progress on black studies has also had a number of successes. We have published three books on the Tuskegee Airmen, the adult book Black Knights: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen and a picture book and middle reader for children, all written by Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly. An outstanding bestseller was Famous Firsts of Black Americans, by Sibyl Hancock, which is now in its eighth printing. In 1995, Olympic Black Women and Famous Firsts of Black Women, both written by Martha Plowden, followed.

An outstanding title, Keith Weldon Medley's We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson is the account of the trial that led to legal segregation in the U.S. in 1896. The Dooky Chase Cookbook and And Still I Cook, featuring recipes from the famous restaurant, and Leah Chase: Listen, I Say Like This, a biography by Carol Allen, celebrate the exceptional life of Leah Chase. She also narrated the companion CD to her biography.

The iconic Cajun Night Before Christmas began our transition into children's books. Most of the forty-nine titles written and/or illustrated by James Rice were children's books, and most were bestsellers. The children's book division has now become our largest niche, and we publish fifteen to twenty titles per year. The subject matter is diverse, but it is still strongly biographic and informational, with many ethnic groups included.  

The second largest division is cookbooks as would be expected since we are in New Orleans. We have published almost all of the old-line restaurant cookbooks of New Orleans, including Lafcadio Hearn's Creole Cookbook, the very first Creole cookbook printed.

The Classic Recipes Series is well underway and growing and includes recipe collections from New Orleans, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Dallas, and this fall will add Houston and Los Angeles.

Pelican's other cookbook series includes Southern cookery, Mexican, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Balkan, Irish, African, Italian, Jewish, and many others. The Jewish cookbooks consist of Kosher and non-Kosher.

Finally, we have not neglected our home state. We have many books on Louisiana, covering almost every aspect of life. The flagship title is the Louisiana Almanac, published intermittently since 1954.  

There are guidebooks, picture books, children's books, cookbooks, histories, and humor books covering almost every aspect of Louisiana life. We have more books about Louisiana than any publisher anywhere. At one time, our Louisiana history textbook was the largest seller in the state. Rules were written that eliminated it.

In 1975, we made a visit to the Ozarks and fell in love with the area. We began a publishing program that includes fourteen titles, many by Phillip W. Steele who was a specialist in outlaws of the Ozarks and folktales. Our leading book is The Shepherd of the Hills, by Harold Bell Wright, and we have published four other titles by him, including a hardcover trilogy with the cooperation of his family.

In 1976, we published the Maverick Guide to Hawaii after more than fifty publishers had turned down the author. It became a success and founded our travel-guide list. We have almost phased out this list.

This is an abbreviated account of our first forty years, and the quality of manuscripts continues to improve and their number increase. My daughter, Kathleen Nettleton, who has worked in the company since age twelve, became the assistant to the publisher last year. An experienced staff has developed. When the time comes for a handoff, the company will be in good hands.