Harnett Thomas Kane was a popular historian of the South and, most especially, a well-known chronicler of Louisiana. He was gifted with a mastery of literary expression and a talent for engaging the reader with colorful, near-poetic prose that could be alternately dramatic and comic. 

   Kane, termed "the last romanticist". was born in New Orleans in 1910 and he grew up as a member of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Episcopal) establishment that dominated the historically “American” part of the city.  

   While at Tulane University, he worked part-time as a “cub reporter” for the New Orleans Item (later the States-Item) and, upon graduation, became a full-time journalist.  Kane was intrigued by public affairs and by the rough give-and-take of New Orleans politics, but he also enjoyed the less-hurried authorship of feature articles and the research such articles required.  By birth and by temperament, he was a gentlemen in the traditional, now sadly old-fashioned, sense of the term and he believed that professional writing, in any form, should seek to uphold positive values, which, in turn, resulted from an ingrained respect for tradition, honor, and law.