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From Twelfth Night (6 January) to Mardi Gras, New Orleans lives for her Carnival - a brilliant season of balls, revelry, costuming, and parades. Carnival artist and historian Henri Schindler offers a stunning panorama of Mardi Gras' evolution and its exuberant diversity - the early Creole cavalcades; the torchlit processions of the Mistick Krewe of Comus; the rise of Rex, King of the Carnival; fabulous tableaux balls, Carnival royalty; Storyville and the Baby Dolls; Les Mysterieuses, the first female society; and African-American creations - the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and Mardi Gras Indians. The artistry, the joyous spirit, and strange opulence of Mardi Gras' Golden Age are revived in a dazzling profusion of illustrations, most of them published for the first time - beautifully finished watercolor designs of floats, costumes, and ball invitations, vintage photographs, lithographs, and prints.