In 1716 New Orleans was only a tiny settlement—a cluster of grim shacks on the muddy banks of the Mississippi. Its site had been selected by Jean-Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville, the man who remained to guide the Louisiana Colony. Slowly but surely the first settlers had cleared the land of its tangled mass of vegetation, had put up their rude homes, and had learned to live beside the mighty river that ruled the Delta country.

But in far-off Paris, New Orleans was made to sound like a fairy-tale city—a paradise of riches. Like bees flocking to honey, the French people rushed to buy shares in the Mississippi Colony which owned this fabulous new world. As more and more shares were sold, the price sky-rocketed. And the dream of Mississippi grew like a bubble at the end of a child's pipe.

In The Mississippi Bubble, Thomas B. Costain tells the amazing story of the boom that rocked France off its feet and turned the eyes of all Europe on the Louisiana Colony.

From the dust jacket