Jay Dearborn Edwards is a professor of anthropology at Louisiana State University, where he has taught courses in anthropology, folklore, and vernacular architecture for more than thirty years. A lifelong student of the historic vernacular and Creole architecture of Louisiana, the Gulf South, and the West Indies, Edwards is the author, coauthor, or editor of four previous books:Cajun Country; Plantations by the River: Watercolor Paintings from St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, by Father Joseph M. Paret, 1859, winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award; Historic Louisiana Nails: Aids to the Dating of Old Buildings; and Louisiana's Remarkable French Vernacular Architecture.
