The road leading to Dr. Milburn Calhoun’s home in the gated community of English Turn curves past groomed lawns that unroll before one gracious mansion after another. A white house with large white columns in front, topped by a domed cupola looms into view. Its design recalls Tara in Gone With the Wind, in which Vivien Leigh, in the role of Scarlett O’Hara, flounced her hoops through a pearly dream of Southern life.

  Inside the house, just to the left, stands a library, which summons another film reference. It is a replica of the two-story library in My Fair Lady, complete with the spiral staircase on which Rex Harrison, in the role of Professor Henry Higgins, asked the musical question, "Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?"

  But in this library stands Dr. Calhoun, in the role of Pelican Publishing owner, retired physician, and preserver of Southern heritage and history. He solicitously moves leather-bound books, crumbling with age, from one side of the library table to the other. He is at home.

  "When we designed this house, we started with the library and the cupola, and then built the house around that," says Calhoun. He figures there are about 6,000 volumes in this room and a few more thousand in other bookcases throughout the house.

  Calhoun cranes his neck and points to another feature of his library: a work of art he had commissioned for the cupola. At the top of the cathedral-like dome, more than two stories above the center of the room, is a six-paneled stained-glass window. Each panel contains a symbol of some aspect of Calhoun’s life that he holds dear. The top three panels depict several books lined up on a library shelf, the Calhoun coat of arms from Scotland with the family name in English and Gaelic, and a Celtic cross with a Bible. The bottom panels show a caduceus with foxglove (the first effective medication for congestive heart failure taken from a recipe concocted by an English witch) and a pelican for the state of Louisiana and the publishing company.

  "And the last is the Confederate flag for our heritage," finishes Calhoun.

Before acquiring Pelican Publishing in 1969, Calhoun and his wife had been at the other end of the book business. They had owned a second-hand bookstore in Gretna called Bayou Books, where they had been purchasing books from Pelican, which was then owned by journalist Hodding Carter II. It was on a shopping trip to the publishing house that they learned Pelican was on the verge of going out of business, when a secretary in Pelican’s office suggested to the Calhouns that they should buy the company.

  So they did and walked innocently into the book publishing business, never anticipating that Pelican would spread its wings and take off as splendidly as it has. Even Philip Carter, Hodding Carter’s son, has to admit of his father’s successor, "Milburn Calhoun has taken a semi-moribund company and turned it into a regional giant."

  Over the past 31 years, Calhoun has cultivated a backlist that is the envy of any small publisher. Now numbering more than 800 strong, it offers such titles as The Cajun Night Before Christmas, the much admired "Architecture" series, Lyle Saxon’s chronicles of Louisiana history, and George Washington Cable’s Old Creole Days. These titles are highly profitable; they have an ongoing appeal for those seeking to discover and rediscover New Orleans and the surrounding region. Local independent bookstores rely on them for the tourist trade, and as New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana become more of a commodity in the outside world, the demand for books with that regional flavor grows.

  In addition to his enviable backlist, Calhoun has also demonstrated great business savvy in resurrecting Pelican from a disaster that would have probably caused other publishers to give up and disappear into retirement. In 1997, a fire destroyed the company’s warehouse and office building, wiping out half of Pelican’s product. Calhoun responded to this setback by creating a new imprint, called Firebird Press, which offers 233 of the lost books on a print-on-demand basis, made possible by the magic of computers. What had been destroyed in hard copy lives again on a hard drive: Pelican recently moved into a new 179,000-foot space on the West Bank and launched a new e-commerce site: epelican.com.

  Although Calhoun retired from his medical practice last year, he does not intend to slow down his publishing work. In an age when the publishing business is characterized by mega-corporations eating up smaller entities, Pelican stands out as resolutely individualistic, a company that in its editorial profile clearly reflects the character, beliefs and opinions of the man who owns the shop. Writers and editors who have passed through Pelican’s offices report that Calhoun does not delegate editorial authority. Rather he holds the final say in all major and even most minor decisions about what his company publishes. In other words: Pelican Publishing is Milburn Calhoun, and Milburn Calhoun is Pelican Publishing.

  This blending of the man and the company explains why Pelican publishes no serious literary fiction. The fiction section, which takes up less than two pages in Pelican’s 65-page backlist catalogue, offers only the most obscure fare. "I have always been looking for good novels, but most people do not write very good novels," says Calhoun. "The problem with fiction is that the writers think no one will read it, unless it’s full of sex. And I don’t see why they have to do that." Calhoun cites his Christian faith to explain his objection to "filthy words" on the printed page.

  But more controversial than Calhoun’s disdain for the modern novelist’s predilection for sex is his interest in publishing books that seek to correct prevailing views of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Two Pelican titles in this category are The South was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy, and Southern by the Grace of God by Michael Andrew Grissom. New this past year are The Southern Nation: The New Rise of the Old South by R. Gordon Thornton and The Confederate Cookbook, Family Favorites from the Sons of Confederate Veterans edited by Lynda Moreau.

  Each of these books displays a Confederate flag on its cover. The first three share in common a particular interpretation of history: the Confederacy was the true moral victor in the Civil War, the South was justifiably defending itself from invasion by a foreign power, and Southerners were unfairly punished in the aftermath of the war by a vengeful North. The books also stand on the assertion that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but rather was a conflict between the South’s demand for state rights and the North’s emphasis on a stronger central government. The Southern Nation also advocates that the South should separate from the North all over again and form its own country – an opinion shared by the publisher.

  "Oh, we would be much better off that way," concurs Calhoun.

These books have brought Pelican Publishing the distinction of being named a "Neo-Confederate" publisher on www.templeofdemocracy.com, a Web site devoted to following those who seek to resurrect the Confederacy’s damaged reputation. When he picked up one of Pelican’s Maverick travel guides, "Temple of Democracy" creator Edward Sebesta says he was as baffled as many people tend to be when they look over Pelican’s eclectic assortment of titles. "There is no way that I’d know that this was the same publisher who put out Southern by the Grace of God."