My husband and I learned more about the history of NOLA in this two-hour walking tour than we had been able to gather in the first few days of our stay in lovely New Orleans. Mary Ellen was our guide and she was top-notch! Best of all, the tour benefits the Louisiana State Museum's historic sites--as Mary Ellen said, "every penny of your ticket goes back to the State Museum for preservation and education." I appreciate a tour that supports such efforts. An early bus tour we took with a private company was light on historical detail and surely supported a for-profit enterprise.
Other reasons I recommend this tour: Mary Ellen started the tour by asking us what we wanted to hear about so that she could draw from her extensive knowledge in a way that fit our group's interests. The two hours flew by and Mary Ellen gave us a range of information--from dates and key historical figures to especially helpful information about architecture, food history, and historical traditions. She supplemented her history with photographs and documents that really helped to bring more of what she was discussing to life for us. Not only did our guide know her history, she also shared her love of the city as a long-time resident--which made the tour especially fun. She gave us some great tips on other sites to visit during our stay. I can only imagine that all the guides providing this tour are at the same level of professionalism.
Two other tips--
(1) Consider booking online or calling ahead. We were considering a morning tour, but found out that a private tour was happening when we stopped in the ticket office. It's worth getting your tickets ahead of time if you don't have much flexibility in your itinerary.
(2) The tour does come with access to historic house where it starts. If you take the afternoon tour, you will need to visit the house before the tour or come back to tour it later. (It seems like they will let you do this free of charge once you have taken the tour.) It's worth the 20 minutes or so it takes for the self-guided tour of this historic site, which has been wonderfully preserved.