Paul Gaston has produced this charming, highly readable, and informative memoir, but not without some trepidation. Like many would-be memoirists he had read “a fair number” of Southern autobiographies with their “childhoods full of dark struggle, misery, injustice, and a lot of just plain meanness….It seemed as though childhood misery was a prerequisite for creativity and a life interesting enough to write and read about.” Gaston’s childhood in Fairhope was an idyll. In fact, he wryly complains “my parents were insufficiently critical. They did not prepare me for disapproval or disdain.”

According to author Wade Hall, next to only Jesus, more books have been published about Abraham Lincoln than any historical figure. Lincoln was a natural storyteller, too, often using humorous narratives to get his political points across without “insulting or angering.” Hall, author of more than twenty books featuring other “good people,” has done something similar in his new book. Decorated with historical illustrations, photographs, and a detailed chronology, it offers yet another charming portrait of our sixteenth president’s rich life.

In the sometimes macho world of outdoors writing, rarely does one writer flatter another by selecting and publishing his work. But with the publication of In That Sweet Country Ron Ellis has chosen to thus honor Harry Middleton, a former senior editor of Southern Living, by collecting thirty-five previously published essays and one poem.

Julie Williams, who holds a doctorate in mass communications from the University of Alabama and teaches journalism at Samford University, has written a tidy, entertaining account of the first school established in America to teach civilian pilots. More specifically, the idea was to teach individuals to teach others to be pilots. There were five students. All this happened in a cotton field owned by Frank D. Kohn outside Montgomery during March, April, and May of 1910.