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Alabama's Civil Rights Trail: An Illustrated Guide to the Cradle of Freedom
By Frye Gaillard;  Foreword by Juan Williams 
Reviewed by Don Noble

In his 2004 history of the civil rights movement in Alabama, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, Frye Gaillard told the story of the struggle for racial equality in 409 pages, rather thoroughly. When he was asked to create a kind of illustrated tourist’s guide to the events of the ’50s and ’60s, he could have simply produced a book of photographs, illustrations, and maps of the major sites of the major events. Indeed, this book is rich in road maps and city maps and photos, but Gaillard has elected to tell the stories, briefly, of what actually happened at the many stops on the civil rights trail.
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Moundville
By John H. Blitz   
Reviewed by Chris Bouier

With Moundville John Blitz presents readers a characterization of a place that by all rights and accounts is as much a national monument as the colossal undertaking of Mount Rushmore and also as invaluable an international heirloom of the human family as the pyramids on the Giza plateau. He develops this profile of the park in three distinct segments: 1) an examination of its modern history; 2) an explication of the scientific methodologies and efforts that have shed so much light on its pre-history; 3) the humanization of this pre-historic data in story form. Finally, Blitz caps this biography of the monument with a brief chapter consisting of the most relevant data of all: an outline and description of what potential visitors should seek and expect when planning their next trip to this remarkable site.
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Alabama Football: Stallings to Saban: A Roller Coaster Ride
By Donald F. Staffo   
Reviewed by Don Noble

Donald Staffo is chairman of the Department of Health and Physical Education at Stillman College and this is his seventh book in the field of sport and physical fitness. Staffo has covered the Alabama football program for more than twenty-five years for local publications and for the Associated Press, and he is undoubtedly knowledgeable. He is also the author of a previous Alabama book, Bama After Bear, that covers the years under Curry and Perkins. Here, I thought, might be a volume that was not a 200-page hallelujah chorus of praise for the wonders of the Alabama football program. And this is to some extent the case.
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Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee
By Allen Barra   
Reviewed by Bill Plott

Why yet another book on Yogi Berra? Simple answer, according to author Allen Barra: There has never been a serious biography of the Hall of Fame catcher, noted mostly for his years with the New York Yankees and his ability to churn out seemingly dimwitted but nevertheless amusing sayings. Barra says Berra is America’s most beloved former athlete and the most quoted American since Mark Twain. It’s hard to deny either assertion.
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Images of America: Bibb County
By Vicky Clemmons and  David Daniel On Behalf of the Centreville Historic Preservation Commission
Reviewed by Danny Gamble

I’m a sucker for historical photographs. The faces, places, and spaces fascinate me. Images of America: Bibb County by Vicky Clemmons and David Daniel on behalf of the Centreville Historic Preservation Commission is one book I will spend hours and hours perusing. The 126-page book is filled with black and white photographs of Bibb County, Alabama, from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. The photos were collected from area residents and focus on the people, institutions, and commercial endeavors that once made Bibb County the industrial capital of Alabama. The cover sets the tone for this collection. In it, Mariana and O.P. Dailey stare at the camera from behind the dry goods cluttered counter of their mercantile store in Centreville, circa 1939. This pre-war photo illustrates that while the Great Depression ravaged the country, the Daileys and Centreville were open for business.

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Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power
By David T. Beito  and Linda Royster Beito 
Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach

Talk about the idol with feet of clay: Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard’s character flaws were in proportion to his virtues. The Beitos have painted their portrait of this mesmerizing man without trying to gloss over his flaws.
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Haunted Birmingham
By Alan Brown   
Reviewed by Danny Gamble

Alan Brown’s title Haunted Birmingham is a bit of a misnomer since his book visits haunts not only in the Magic City, but also in Bessemer, Columbiana, Jasper, and Montevallo. The book fairly drips ectoplasm. All the wonders of the invisible world are here—the orbs, the shadows, the footsteps, even a haunted mummy. And some of these specters remind us that the metaphysical is not so far from the physical.
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On Harper's Trail
By Elizabeth Findley Shores   
Reviewed by Julia Oliver

This engrossing biography of Roland McMillan Harper, “Pioneering Botanist of the Southern Coastal Plain,” is clearly a labor of love as well as an extraordinary feat of erudition.... Like many others plagued with the onus of genius, Harper was rife with eccentricities. In the scientific circles he moved in, he became legendary for his encyclopedic knowledge of plants and regional terrain, much of which was gleaned during long, solitary treks over the countryside and coastal plains of Alabama, Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle.
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Spit, Scarey Ann & Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another
By Kathryn Tucker Windham   
Reviewed by Rebecca Dempsey

Kathryn Tucker Windham’s memoir is refreshing because it is not about childhood trauma; there is no abuse or poverty in this story. Rather, it is a nostalgic look back to a distant childhood and a past era of the American South. Windham’s remembrances are tender without being sentimental, and the tone of Spit, Scarey Ann, & Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another is one of tranquility, as if Windham is writing simply because she enjoys savoring her memories.
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Lizards and Crocodilians of the Southeast; Snakes of the Southeast
By Whit Gibbons,  Judy Greene, Tony Mills, and Mike Dorcas
Reviewed by Don Noble

These are truly beautiful books, filled
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Sweet Spot: 125 Years of Baseball and the Louisville Slugger
By David Magee  and Philip Shirley; Foreword by Ken Griffey Jr.
Reviewed by Sidney J. Vance

Sweet Spot: 125 Years of Baseball and the Louisville Slugger is a generous pictorial history of the Louisville Slugger, the essential baseball bat for over a century. David Magee’s and Philip Shirley’s complete chronological account begins with the mythic origins of the bat in the 1880s and extends to the technology of contemporary composite alloy techno-bats. The book relies on the unique historical consistency of baseball and its meticulous records to show how the Hillerich family business has imparted a mystique to its bats that has enhanced the game and made its brand one of the most recognizable and profitable in all of sports.
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America’s Revival Tradition and the Evangelists Who Made It
By David T. Morgan   
Reviewed by Rebecca Dempsey

The famous evangelists in America’s history differed somewhat in doctrine, and were widely disparate in education, oratorical style, and business acumen. However, they shared a desire to preach the gospel to as many people as they possibly could, and had the ambition and commitment to make this goal their life’s work. David T. Morgan traces the path of revivalism in America’s history, beginning with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in the eighteenth century and ending with the modern-day televangelists. Charles Finney, Dwight L. Moody, Sam Jones, Billy Sunday, and Aimee Semple McPherson, along with Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, and others “contributed to shaping, to a significant extent, the mosaic that is contemporary America.”
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Images of America: Tallassee
By William E. Goss and  Karren Pell 
Reviewed by Ruth Beaumont Cook

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an all-verbal equivalent of Images of America: Tallassee would run to several volumes. As a slim paperback, this book employs vintage photographs to tell the story of an historic Alabama town whose origins mingle with the Native American settlements of Talisi and Tukabahchi, which also thrived beside the great falls of the Tallapoosa River. A comprehensive Introduction and detailed photo captions fill out the narrative.
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Critical Insights: To Kill a Mockingbird
By Don Noble, ed.   
Reviewed by Book Noted

From the publisher: Edited by Alabama native and Lee scholar Don Noble, this volume brings together some of the very best criticism available on Lee’s timeless classic. Overview essays by Nancy Grisham Anderson and Gurdip Panesar consider the cultural contexts surrounding the novel and the critical reception of Lee’s work. Neil Heims offers a close examination of the novel as wisdom literature while Teresa Godwin Phelps and Thomas L. Shaffer consider the lessons being taught in the novel. Critic Matthew J. Bolton suggests looking at Lee’s novel as an introduction to life in the South with an eye towards understanding Faulkner while Laurie Champion examines the notion of visual perception as a metaphor that is carried throughout the novel.
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Vicksburg, 1863
By Winston Groom   
Reviewed by Don Noble

Vicksburg, 1863, is Groom’s fifteenth book, and it is beginning to look as if he will be known, in the end, as Winston Groom, gifted narrative historian, not just as the author of Forrest Gump, notwithstanding how delightful that novel is.
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A Generous Life: W. James Samford Jr.
By Wayne Greenhaw   
Reviewed by Jim Buford

The saga of this family began with William James Samford, who was a successful attorney and governor of Alabama. He took to heart the words of Luke 12:48 that “To whom much has been given, much is expected,” and he ensured that the virtues of hard work, service to others, duty to country, and standing up for what’s right were passed on to his children and grandchildren. In A Generous Life, Wayne Greenhaw chronicles the life and times of his great-grandson, William James (Jimmy) Samford Jr.
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Born Country: How Faith, Family, and Music Brought Me Home
By Randy Owen  with Allen Rucker 
Reviewed by Kevin Wilder

If anyone’s qualified to sing in a band named after the Yellowhammer state, it’s got to be Randy Owen. In Born Country, he paints a magnificent portrait of Northeast Alabama, the area where he was born and continues to live.
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HealthSouth: The Wagon to Disaster
By Aaron Beam  with Chris Warner 
Reviewed by H. F. Lippincott

Aaron Beam, co-founder (in 1980) and comptroller of HealthSouth, has written an account of his involvement with CEO Richard Scrushy, who was convicted in 2006 of bribery, conspiracy, and fraud. Although Beam left the company in 2003, eventually to become a whistle blower, he too was convicted as a felon and served three months in the federal prison camp in Montgomery. Since, Beam has spoken widely at business schools about the morality of corporate finance. This book spells out the details of his rags-to-riches story—and back to rags again: Beam now operates a one-man lawn service in Lower Alabama.

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The Most They Ever Had
By Rick Bragg   
Reviewed by Don Noble

The people of Appalachia, Alabama’s Calhoun County in particular, are lucky to have among them one who will not let their stories die even though the way of life there is changing, inexorably, all the time, and few outsiders are going to care. As unlikely as it may seem at first, Rick Bragg is doing for his culture what I. B. Singer and Shalom Aleichem did for theirs. If not for stories like “Gimpel the Fool” and “The Fiddler on the Roof,” the Jewish shtetl life of Eastern Europe, now gone, would also be forgotten. Closer to home, Bragg is a kind of Alan Lomax, who captured the folk songs of Appalachia.
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This Day in Civil Rights History
By Horace Randall Williams  and Ben Beard  
Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach

This is the kind of book you CAN put down, but you will pick it up again an hour later, a day later or the next time that blowhard at the office holds forth on what “really happened” in 1965 or 1963 or 1950. Originally published in 2005 by Emmis Books, this paperback edition will help you win arguments, impress friends, and find a launch point for further research.
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A Family Home: A History of the President
By Nell Richardson   
Reviewed by Edward Reynolds

For the Auburn aficionado who thinks he or she has bought every piece of merchandise available that celebrates his or her beloved orange and blue, Nell Richardson, wife of former Auburn University president Dr. Ed Richardson, has added one more little souvenir. Mrs. Richardson has documented the history of the school’s President’s Mansion in her book A Family Home: A History of the President’s Mansion at Auburn University. It’s a written history packed with candid photographs of the university’s presidents and their families (and dogs) who have ruled over the academic/football kingdom in the Loveliest Village on the Plains.
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Headwaters: A Journey of Alabama Rivers
By John C. Hall  and Beth Maynor Young 
Reviewed by Britt Blake

While I was growing up in Montevallo, my father often mused that if I took the inclination, I could launch my canoe in Shoal Creek across the street from our house and paddle all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Headwaters: A Journey on Alabama Rivers, with text by John C. Hall and photographs by Beth Maynor Young, offers a much easier tour of the state’s diverse water system–from rain dripping from beech leaves into the soil in mountainous northern Alabama to the "Great River’s" arrival at Mobile Bay.
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Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town
By Warren St. John   
Reviewed by Don Noble

Warren St. John did a wonderful job of immersion reportage in Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, and, although he likes football, he has always seemed to me more of a soccer guy.  Outcasts United is a study of youth soccer in Clarkston, Georgia, but Clarkston is no typical town, and the members of the Fugees, short for “refugees,” are no typical young soccer players.
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I Just Make People Up: Ramblings with Clark Walker
By Foster Dickson   
Reviewed by Julia Oliver

This is a gorgeous coffee table book. Elegantly square, not the most comfortable shape to hold, it might be more perused than read—which would be a shame, as Foster Dickson’s narrative biography of Clark Walker is a triumph of the as-told-to style of writing.
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Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt
By Hasan Kwame Jeffries   
Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries’ account of the struggles and hardships faced by African-American Lowndes Countians is a well-researched and scholarly work. After all, he is an assistant professor of history at Ohio State University. Unexpected, however, are the heartache and anger the story evokes.
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Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller
By Kim E. Nielsen   
Reviewed by Don Noble

The world knows Annie Sullivan as “Teacher,” the patient nanny/instructress to Helen Keller who signed “water” in the deaf/blind girl’s palm at the pump in the garden at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia on April 5, 1887, thus connecting, in Helen’s mind, the word and the thing. Within hours after this breakthrough, Keller had learned thirty new words.
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Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader
By Alan Gribben  and Jeffrey Alan Melton, eds. 
Reviewed by Elaine Hughes

Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader, edited by Alan Gribben and Jeffrey Alan Melton, is an appropriate tribute to the literary figure many think the greatest American writer. On the occasion of the centenary of Twain’s death, this collection offers reflection on his early career and his first successes. The collection includes excerpts from all five of Twain’s travel writings—The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), A Tramp Abroad (1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and Following the Equator (1897)—and commentary by the editors on the genre and on Twain’s mastery of it.
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Chasing Wings: Birding Exploits and Encounters
By Richard Modlin   
Reviewed by H. F. Lippincott

A retired marine biologist who is also an occasional bird watcher, Richard Modlin has collected his birding field notes from all over the world along with meticulous lists of birds for each section. I’m not a birder, but I’ve carted around my youthful Peterson bird guide—Modlin calls him "the Audubon of our time"—all my life, even though I never use it. Yet I soon got caught up in Modlin’s book, and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in the subject, especially young people. Informal scientific books of this quality are all too rare.
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The South's New Racial Politics
By Glen Browder   
Reviewed by Colin Crews

Dr. Glen Browder’s credentials in Alabama politics are as impressive as his unique new work The South’s New Racial Politics: Inside the Race Game of Southern History. The former United States congressman gives a firsthand account of the South’s most enduring and troubling issue and offers an original thesis. Browder displays an uncommon style and approach to this scholarly topic early in the introduction when he refers to Martin Luther King Jr. and George Wallace as “these guys.” But his informal style helps make a sensitive subject more accessible.
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Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory
By Kimberly Wallace-Sanders   
Reviewed by Linda A. McQueen

Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory presents an in-depth analysis of the various myth, fiction, history, and other embodiments of the mammy characters between the 1820s and 1935. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders probes the images and themes immortalized in American literary and cultural imagination that continue to have a provocative hold on the American psyche. This book engages questions asked time and time again: Who is this mammy? What does she reveal about race and the American culture? Why do portraits of her insist she preferred white children to her own? How did she become a central figure in our understanding of slavery, gender, motherhood, and the American South?
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Fanning the Spark: A Memoir
By Mary Ward Brown   
Reviewed by Norman McMillan

In 1978, Mary Ward Brown attended a series of lectures at the University of Montevallo by the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell. According to her new memoir Fanning the Spark, she was most taken with some advice he gave: “To fulfill one’s destiny, a person should follow his bliss.” The central bliss this memoir focuses on is the bliss of writing. However, Brown shows us how that particular bliss competes with many other blisses, such as the delights of family and motherhood, the pleasures of place and home, and the joys of books and reading. Too often, pursuing one bliss means scanting another, and that unresolved conflict takes its toll, sometimes in the form of guilt. Her final thought in her memoir: “I just hope to write one or two more stories before I leave this earth and, at the same time, be forgiven a few sins of omission while doing it.”
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Twelve and Counting: The National Championships of Alabama Football
By Kenneth Gaddy, ed.;  Foreword by Mal Moore  
Reviewed by Van Newell

Like Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, Twelve and Counting: The National Championships of Alabama Football features a mountain of information, of anecdotes and of history and is a book best enjoyed slowly, letting the history digest in one’s brain. Each of the chapters encompasses at least a year’s worth of information regarding (trumpets at the ready) the Alabama Crimson Tide football program and each national championship that they celebrate. Like a road trip, the reading may take a while, but that may mean you may enjoy the ride all the more.
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Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia
By Rich Whitt   
Reviewed by Karl Jones

Behind the Hedges, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Rich Whitt, is a riveting tale of self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and power-brokers and how they will do most anything to preserve their power and influence. On the surface, the book is a stinging indictment of University of Georgia President Michael Adams, his senior staff, and the news media (including Witt’s former employer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that turned a blind eye to improper and perhaps illegal activities. As a sad aside, the author died as this book was published.
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Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs
By Gregory L. Reece   
Reviewed by Van Newell

There are those of us who are sated with the basic cable specials on Big Foot, Hidden Worlds, UFOs, and the occult, but for most of us, we are really told very little that we did not already know. Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs by Montevallo’s Gregory L. Reece capitalizes on the inherent interest that many people have regarding obscure pseudosciences and faux “alien” technology. Instead of a forty-four-minute “hour long” special of by-the-numbers cotton candy that most of us already really know about Big Foot, Reece goes a much appreciated step further.
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Foot Soldiers for Democracy
By Horace Huntley and John W. McKerley, eds.   
Reviewed by Ruth Beaumont Cook

James Armstrong served his country during World War II, landing at Normandy Beach. “Fear leaves you,” he said of that experience. “You think about what you are trying to do, and you just move forward filled with faith.”  After the war, Armstrong used the GI bill to become a barber. He also became a registered voter—not an easy accomplishment for an African-American in Birmingham at that time.
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Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs
By Askhari Johnson Hodari  and Yvonne McCalla Sobers, eds. Foreword by The Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Reviewed by Linda A. McQueen

Common sense is the theme of these African proverbs. They are kept alive by centuries of experiences handed down by word of mouth from African elders. How many times have you talked to individuals and needed to say something to cause them to think about a situation and see the solution? Do you need a message of guidance and inspiration? Welcome to Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs, edited by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers.
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Alabama Sports: A Comprehensive Guide to Sports in Alabama
By Steve Dupont   
Reviewed by Van Newell

Part travel guide, part historical record, Alabama Sports offers ten chapters involving the exhibits, venues, sports, and sports legends that have made a mark on the state’s sports history. Giving extra gravitas to the publication is an introduction by Governor Bob Riley, a foreword by Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Executive Director William Legg, and stellar photography reaching back over a hundred years.
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Tin Man
By Charlie Lucas;  Interviews by Ben Windham; Photographs by Chip Cooper
Reviewed by Julia Oliver

This Art-with-a-capital-A book is an astutely synchronized compilation of as-told-to autobiography that often reads like music sounds, and brilliant images that look as if they might leap off the pages. In fifteen triumphant chapters, Ben Windham has corralled the essence of wit and wisdom, creative energy, and life-experience of internationally known folk artist Charlie Lucas.
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American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
By Jon Meacham   
Reviewed by Julia Oliver

You may not have much admiration for the famous subject of this biography, but don’t let that keep you from reading it. One incentive could be that the book, which came out last year in hardcover, has won the Pulitzer Prize. Newsweek magazine editor Jon Meacham’s superior journalistic and analytical skills are evident on every page of this fascinating, vividly imagerized history. The modernized style of narration, which at times is delightfully gossipy in tone, makes the long-dead players come alive, especially the central figure.
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The Fair Hope of Heaven: A Hundred Years After Utopia
By Mary Lois Timbes   
Reviewed by Don Noble

Mary Lois Timbes feels strongly about Fairhope, Alabama. She was raised there as a child in the 1950s and attended the Organic School, and she lived there again as a grown woman, in the ’80s and ’90s, so this book is in part memoir. Timbes is, however, something of an expert on Fairhope, having written a previous Fairhope book, Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, with Robert E. Bell. She has a pride in the town’s unusual history, and she has a lament, a sad feeling, for what has happened to Fairhope recently. So this book serves as a kind of warning to pleasant, quaint places everywhere.
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Jim Crow and Me: Stories from My Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer
By Solomon S. Seay Jr.  with Delores R. Boyd; Foreword by John Hope Franklin
Reviewed by H.F. Lippincott

Rather than a conventional memoir, Solomon S. Seay Jr., the distinguished Montgomery civil rights attorney (b. 1931), gives us “disjointed episodes” about his memorable trials and incidents between 1957 and 1977, key years for the civil rights struggle. The tone is lively, to appeal to a broad audience—stories that “have some meaning, yet while being entertaining.”
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A Blue Voice Crying in the Wilderness of a Red State
By David Morgan   
Reviewed by Book Noted

From the publisher: Letters to the editor provide concerned citizens with a means of conveying their thoughts—positive and negative—about what goes on in our society at all levels. David T. Morgan, the author and compiler of the letters in this book, has strong opinions on matters national, state, and local, and he feels compelled to make his views known. Consequently, he has written numerous letters to the editor over the last two decades....
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The African Book of Names
By Askhari Hodari   
Reviewed by Colin Crews

Early civil rights activist and author Richard Moore said, “Free men name themselves.” This idea is embodied in Askhari Hodari’s The African Book of Names. The four-part work contains an overview of African culture and history, a guide to traditional naming ceremonies, and more than five thousand African names. Hodari infuses the historical facts with her own story of renaming and self-discovery.
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A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright
By Anne Wright  and Saundra Rose Maley, eds.  
Reviewed by Dennis Sampson

The American poet James Wright was a voluminous correspondent, and these more than five hundred pages of A Wild Perfection are merely a sampling of his letters. Wright was a poet of supreme importance to his generation, and to the generation that followed. He was also, as these letters indicate, a man of tremendous compassion and intelligence. He lived, as Rilke said of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, "at the very center of his art."
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Black Barons of Birmingham: The South's Greatest Negro League Team and Its Players
By Larry Powell;  Foreword by Clayton Sherrod  
Reviewed by Bill Plott

Larry Powell has broken new ground with this general history of the Birmingham Black Barons, a storied team in the Negro baseball leagues.  It is the first real overview of the team that includes both a basic timeline of the team and also profiles of some of the more notable players.
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The Pillared City: Greek Revival Mobile
By John S. Sledge;  Photography by Sheila Hagler 
Reviewed by Dee Jordan

Like most readers, I don’t understand the intricacies of nineteenth century architecture. However, in his new book The Pillared City: Greek Revival Mobile scholar and Mobile Press-Register books editor John S. Sledge reveals his passion and knowledge of architectural history. And this history is fascinating.
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Making Crosses
By Ellen Morris Prewitt   
Reviewed by Delores Jordan

Ellen Morris Prewitt posits an intriguing concept: kinetic prayers. By using one’s creativity of discarded and rejected objects, one can make crosses and commune with God. "Cross making is an ongoing intentional process of making prayerful decisions," she writes. Her book is a testament to her philosophy. It is both a guide and a workbook.
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Truth, Lies, and O-rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
By Allan J. McDonald  with James R. Hansen 
Reviewed by Edward Reynolds

Truth, Lies, and O-rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster is an abrupt slap in the face, awakening the reader to the mess left on NASA’s hallowed grounds in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster. One freezing cold January morning in Florida, seconds after launch, the first in-flight deaths in NASA history occurred. Onboard was Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher who was to be the first ordinary citizen to fly into orbit.
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From Peanuts to the Pressbox: Insider Sports Stories from a Life Behind the Mic
By Eli Gold  with M. B. Roberts; Foreword by Verne Lundquist
Reviewed by Don Alexander

One may know Eli Gold as the radio voice of The Crimson Tide, of NASCAR, of the Birmingham Bulls, or of regional Ford advertisements. But how about the Long Island Ducks, the Roanoke Valley Rebels, World of Outlaws races, or Arena Football? From Peanuts to the Pressbox is a delightful collection of stories about broadcasting, from the recollections of a man whose mom (primarily because of excessive absences) negotiated his high school diploma: “He knows what he wants to do. Give him his diploma, and he won’t bother anyone.”
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Teddy's Child: Growing Up In the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars
By Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton   
Reviewed by Rebecca Dempsey

Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton’s book is more than a memoir; it is a narrative complete with interesting characters and rich historical detail. Teddy’s Child: Growing Up in the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars is about the failures and accomplishments of the author’s eccentric family, but the themes extend beyond Hamilton’s family to comment on the struggles of humanity: the dreams individuals reach to possess and the nobility, and at times futility, of that effort.
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Images of America: Gadsden Public Library: 100 Years of Service
By Library History Committee, eds.   
Reviewed by Delores Jordan

This beautiful picture book of the Gadsden Public Library is not just a historical recounting of the many buildings that made up the library and its branches, but it also is a history of a literary community. Readers can’t help but be impressed by the outpouring of money, time, talent, energy, and love by the people of Gadsden and its surrounding communities. Images of America: Gadsden Public Library: 100 Years of Service is a jewel.
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Truman Capote’s Southern Years: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin
By Marianne M. Moates   
Reviewed by Norman McMillan

Happily back in print is a charming book that many of us found essential in understanding the young Truman Capote. The new version is re-titled Truman Capote’s Southern Years: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin, thereby emphasizing the essential role played by Capote’s cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter, who was the source of the wonderful stories that Moates recounts in the book. The book also sports a new cover photo of Capote holding Queenie, the dog owned by Capote’s soul-mate Sook, a picture that suggests better than the one on the 1989 book the Monroeville world of his childhood and adolescence, when Truman lived in his elderly cousins’ home or returned to Alabama on summer visits.
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There’s Hope for the World: The Memoir of Birmingham, Alabama’s First African American Mayor
By Richard Arrington   
Reviewed by Edward Reynolds

Former Birmingham mayor Richard Arrington has written his recollections and impressions of his two decades running the state’s largest city in his autobiography There’s Hope for the World: The Memoir of Birmingham, Alabama’s First African American Mayor. Arrington’s 1979 election marked a profound change following decades of white rule that was eventually dismantled with the city’s conversion from a city commission style government run by racist thug Bull Connor to a mayor-council operation in the early 1960s that began to recognize black residents in a more equal light, though it took another decade for profound changes to take root.
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The Life and Poetry of John Beecher (1904-1980): Advocate of Poetry as a Spoken Art
By Foster Dickson   
Reviewed by Book Noted

From the publisher: This work is a two-part overview to this writer, poet, journalist, activist, and sociologist. The introduction covers some background on how scholars and academics have neglected [John] Beecher, for a variety of possible reasons. Part one consists of a biography that centers on Beecher’s working life, only briefly discussing his four marriages and only mentioning that he had four children. Part two covers a sampling of his poetry, offering explications and critical analysis that point to the conclusion that Beecher should not have been neglected or omitted from literary study to the extent that he has been.
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Mighty By Sacrifice: The Destruction of an American Bomber Squadron, August 29, 1944
By James L. Noles  and James L. Noles Jr. 
Reviewed by Bill Plott

Last Spring, a writer in Smithsonian magazine noted that “even after half a century, there are little nuggets of stories about World War II that have just not been told or have not been understood very well.” This fascinating book by James L. Noles and James L. Noles Jr. is proof positive of that observation.  The Noleses have penned a narrative of a United States bomber squadron’s mission to destroy an oil refinery and railroad yards in Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, in August 1944.
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Potluck, Postscripts and Potpourri
By Jean Gay Mussleman   
Reviewed by Sherry Kughn

Those who love the South will enjoy the cookbook memoir Potluck, Postscripts & Potpourri by Jean Gay Mussleman of the Oakland community near Florence. Mussleman interjects a down-home wholesomeness when tying personal stories to time-honored Southern recipes. In the process, she preserves stories of her growing-up years in the 1930s to present times. She writes stories behind many near-forgotten customs that older generations witnessed as children, such as watching their mothers cut up raw chicken, throwing barn parties for neighbors, listening to elderly relatives, honoring their ancestral homes, and celebrating all holidays with food and family.
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Life and Death Matters
By Robert L. Baldwin, M.D., M.A.   
Reviewed by Sherry Kughn

The autobiographical account of how Dr. Robert L. Baldwin came to write against capital punishment is the story of his life. His book, Life and Death Matters, is a candid look at how he, a Birmingham physician of accomplishment, discovered error in his own thinking.
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Treasuring Alabama's Black Belt: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Place
By Nancy Anderson  and Foster Dickson, eds. 
Reviewed by Book Briefly Noted

From the editors: Treasuring Alabama’s Black Belt: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Place is a curriculum guide for secondary education teachers about teaching the concept of place. Co-edited by Auburn University at Montgomery professor Nancy Anderson and Booker T. Washington Magnet High School creative writing teacher Foster Dickson, the 168-page book includes sections on social studies, English/language arts, and art. Each section includes a scholarly introduction, abstracts of suggested teaching materials, and lesson plans that could fit any humanities teacher’s needs.
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PR Made Easy
By John Bitter   
Reviewed by Philip Shirley

John Bitter reveals the point of this fifty-two-page book in his foreword, saying the purpose of a public relations practitioner is to achieve “action of some sort on the part of the recipient.” Through a series of personal anecdotes and observations, Bitter attempts to put the entry-level PR person or the volunteer publicity director drafted by a not-for-profit at ease as they attempt to tell the story of their organization. He correctly leads them to understand that their mission is not merely to convey information, but to persuade.
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God's Bouguet for Empty Nesters
By Sherry Kughn   
Reviewed by Book Noted

From the publisher: God’s Bouquet for Empty Nesters compares God’s greatest intangible blessings to the characteristics of flowers that women love. Author Sherry Kughn knows that mothers of mature age have learned to value, not the tangible blessings we sought when younger, but the blessings of hope, joy, peace, wisdom, perseverance, truth, courage, gratitude, kindness, humility, faithfulness, forgiveness, and patience.
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