Tennessee Books

A professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State U., Hendricks writes on how towns in backcountry Virginia came about from the designs and ambitions of entrepreneurial individuals. They did not just spring up randomly in some pleasing meadow or on some riverbank happened upon by a frontiersman, for example, or a group which had struck out into the wilderness. "The people who put these plans [for towns] into action were motivated by a variety of economic, social, or philanthropic factors and sometimes purely by circumstance and opportunity." These entrepreneurial-like individuals were not a part of any organized movement. But their activities in toto played a large part in opening up the western parts of Virginia and setting a pattern for westward expansion. Among the towns Hendricks studies in larger topological areas such as the Piedmont and the Great Valley (Shenandoah) are Winchester, Marysville, Leesburg, Woodstock, Charlottesville, and Brent Town. Early maps of many of the towns especially demonstrate the ideas and purposes of their founders. Along with the maps, the authors specifics on the conception, establishment, and early period of the many towns makes each oe stand out distinctively. The enterprises and goals of the town were as varied as the individuals who conceived them.

This is a well written, highly interesting and fun book. The rides in here are great fun and well documented. Mr. Rogers should devote more time to sharing his in depth knowledge and expertise with all of us!

This book gives a spectacular view of life as a German Officer in a POW Camp in Crossville, TN. I am currently a student at Tennessee Tech University which is less than an hour away from the former camp. I had never heard of the camp before Mr. Hennes' book. It seems to be a part of U.S. History that has been forgotten. I also had the pleasure of listing to a presentation where he spoke with students and faculty at the school for about 2 hours. His story is so amazing. He gives you that view on life from inside the barbed wire as he shares personal experiences with you. This book helps me understand the war from a new perspective.

This book was a gift. The recipient was my nephew and he said he enjoyed it. This book brought back memories of his grandfather's stories about Engel Stadium.

David W. Reed. The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged . Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press (May 15, 2008). 122 pages, 4 maps (on CD), notes, index. ISBN: 978-1572336179 $33.00 (Hardcover w/DJ).

How can an essential "cornerstone of Shiloh historiography" remain unavailable to the general public for so long? That's what I kept thinking as I was reading this reprint of the 1913 edition of David W. Reed's The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. Reed, a veteran of the battle and the first historian of the Shiloh National Military Park, was tabbed to write the official history of the battle, and this book was the result. Reed wrote a short, concise history of the fighting and included quite a bit of other valuable information in the pages that followed. The large and impressive maps that accompanied the original text are here converted into digital format and included in a CD located within a flap at the back of the book. Author and former Shiloh Park Ranger Timothy Smith is responsible for bringing this important reference work back from obscurity. His introduction to the book also places it in the proper historical framework.

Reed's history of the campaign and battle covers only seventeen pages and is meant to be a brief history of the subject. The detail is revealed in the rest of the book. And what detail there is!

Reed's order of battle for Shiloh goes down to the regimental and battery level. He includes the names of the leaders of each organization where known, including whether or not these men were killed, wounded, captured, or suffered some other fate. In a touch not often seen in modern studies, the author also states the original regiment of brigade commanders. In another nice piece of detail following the order of battle, staff officers for each brigade and higher organization are listed.

The book's main point and where it truly shines is in the section entitled "Detailed Movements of Organizations". Reed follows each unit in their movements during the battle. Reading this section along with referring to the computerized maps gives one a solid foundation for future study of Shiloh. Forty-five pages cover the brigades of all three armies present at Shiloh. For other examples of this approach, I recommend Bradley Gottfried's Brigades of Gettysburg and Lanny K. Smith's book on the Union Army at Stones' River. The latter author takes Reed's technique to another level, following units throughout the entire Stones River Campaign! Smith promises a second volume on the Confederates as well.

Wargamers will love the "Abstract of Field Returns". This section lists Present for Duty, engaged, and casualties for each regiment and battery in an easy to read table format. Grant's entire Army of the Tennessee has Present for Duty strengths. Buell's Army of the Ohio is also counted well. The Confederate Army of the Mississippi is counted less accurately, usually only going down to brigade level and many times relying only on engaged strengths. That said, buy this book if you are looking for a good reference work for help with your order of battle.

In what I believe is an unprecedented move in Civil War literature, the University of Tennessee Press made the somewhat unusual decision to include Reed's detailed maps of the campaign and battle in a CD which is included in a plastic sleeve inside the back cover of the book. The cost of reproducing the large maps and including them as foldouts or in a pocket in the book must have been prohibitive, necessitating this interesting use of a CD. The maps were simple to view and came in a PDF format. All you'll need is Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program, to view these. It will be interesting to see if other publishers follow suit. Maps are an integral part of military history, and this solution is far better than deciding to include poor maps or no maps at all. The Read Me file that came with the CD relays the following information:

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The maps contained on this CD are scans of the original oversized maps printed in the 1913 edition of D. W. Reed's The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. The original maps, which were in a very large format and folded out of the pages of this edition, are of varying sizes, up to 23 inches by 25 inches. They were originally created in 1901 by the Shiloh National Military Park under the direction of its historian, David W. Reed. They are the most accurate Shiloh battle maps in existence.

The maps on the CD are saved as PDF (Portable Document Format) files and can be read on any operating system (Windows, Macintosh, Linux) by utilizing Adobe Acrobat Reader. Visit http://www.adobe.com to download Acrobat Reader if you do not have it installed on your system.

Map 1. The Field of Operations from Which the Armies Were Concentrated at Shiloh, March and April 1862

Map 2. The Territory between Corinth, Miss., and Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn., Showing Positions and Route of the Confederate Army in Its Advance to Shiloh, April 3, 4, 5, & 6, 1862

Map 3. Positions on the First Day, April 6, 1862

Map 4. Positions on the Second Day, April 7, 1862

Complete captions appear on the maps.
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Timothy Smith has done students of the Civil War an enormous favor by republishing this important early work on Shiloh. Relied on for generations by Park Rangers and other serious students of the battle, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged has been resurrected for a new generation of Civil War readers. This classic reference work is an essential book for those interested in the Battle of Shiloh. Wargamers and those interested in tactical minutiae will also find Reed's work to be a very good buy. Highly recommended to all.

Thank you to Tom Post of the University of Tennessee Press.

This is a remarkably well-written account of a story that was far more complex than the lawsuit headlines. The author sensitively recounts the positions of all sides in the controversy without making judgments so that readers find themselves empathizing with points of view they may otherwise have rejected out of hand. I read this as part of a law school course, and I'm glad I did. I've recommended it to many friends since my first reading.

Memphis Tennessee's fabled Beale Steet brings to mind "the home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll", as described on the Beale Street website. Beale Street today is indeed a modern, vibrant district filled with music and nightlife with over 25 clubs and shops in the brief space of three city blocks. But the focus on the current tourist-oriented revival of Beale Street overlooks much of its historical character as "the Main Street of Negro America." This short pictorial history captures in text and photographs the music that pervades Beale Street. It also describes the community as a whole and the changes Beale Street has witnessed over the years. It is a remarkable history. The book, "Beale Street," is part of the Images of America series which offers the opportunity to get to know many local communities in the United States. The authors, Beverly Bond and Janann Sherman, are professors of history at the University of Memphis. They have selected a collection of rare photographs to show the history of Beale Street, and they have accompanied the photographs with good annotations and a particularly insightful introduction.

Beale Street began to grow shortly after the Civil War when, as a result of the migration of newly-freed black people, an epidemic, and other factors, African Americans became an increasling large portion of the Memphis population with Beale Street as its heart. Although most of the people were poor and most of the property on Beale Street was owned by white people, a small number of black people became involved in Beale Street real estate and were among the first African American millionares in the South. Music, entertainment, and black business flourished on Beale Street from roughly 1900 -- 1950 as the Street became known as "the main street of Negro America". In the late 1960s, Beale Street suffered a severe decline with neglect, unrest, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just blocks from Beale Street. Revitalization efforts stuttered and failed until, in the 1980s, Beale Street became known again as the vibrant area it is today. The revived Beale Street is different from the Street in its years of glory.

Bond and Sherman offer an eloquent picture of historic Beale Street in their introduction to this book. Beale Street was "the center for business, politics, and social and religious life, a vibrant collection of pool halls, saloons, banks, barbershops, dry goods and clothing stores, theaters, drugstores, gambling dens, jewlers, fraternal clubs, churches, entertainment agencies, beauty salons, hotels, pawn shops, blues halls, and juke joints". Bond and Sherman continue: "As lively at night as it was during the day, Beale Street thrummed with music and revelry....The street teemed with all manner of 'carefree humans' .... including sporting men, easy riders,steet-corner preachers, voodoo doctors, conjure women, snow pushers, river men, cooks and housemaids, showgirls, card sharks, laborers and yard men, guitar players, gamblers, country people in to see the sights, the famous, the infamous, and the unknown." It was a street unlikely to be seen or captured again.

In seven chapters of photographs, Bond and Sherman capture the growth of Beale Street, its glory days, decline, and subsequent rebirth. There are wonderfully contrasting photographs of old steamers on the Mississippi (p. 10), the busy, unceasing life of the Street (throughout),churches (p. 15) and mansions and desperately poor areas in close proximity.(pp. 20-21) The book documents the community of black lawyers, doctors, and dentists that flourished on Beale Street as well as the fraternal orders which attempted to improve the economic life and cohesiveness of the the Street, and the lively political life that flourished in the black community for many years, including visits by President Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon.

During the Depression, a group of cotton manufacturers established an annual parade in Memphis to boost their sagging industry. When African Americans were relegated to menial roles in this parade, the Beale Street community established a festival of its own known as the "Cotton Makers Jubilee." This event flourshed during the late 1940s to late 1950s and continues today in a modified form. It is amply recaptured in this book.

The music for which Beale Street is famous receives attention in a chapter titled "The Memphis Sound" with photographs and discussions of W.C. Handy, jug bands, Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Bukka White,Memphis Minnie, B.B.King, Howling Wolf, Ruby Wilson, and many others. It is a part of America's cultural heritage which is unique and precious.

The final two chapters of the book show the death and rebirth of Beale Street. The pivotal moment was the assassination of Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, together with the tension and destruction that both preceeded and followed this tragedy. Beale Street was demolished and deserted and withstood repeated attempts at its revitalization until with entreprenurial interest and civic involvement the Street gained its current identity as a tourist destination.

Old Beale Street can never be recaptured, but it can be remembered for its accomplishments and as a source of creativity and joy. Memphis blues singer Rufus Thomas observed that "if you were black for one night on Beale Street, you would never want to be white again."(p. 8) I enjoyed reliving the triumphs and the sorrows of Beale Street in this book.

Robin Friedman

I would recommend this book to any genealogist who has ties to Bedford Co. Tennessee; especially during the time period between 1863-1910 as Will Books I & II cover that era. I was greatly impressed with the fact that the book had a full name index as opposed to just being indexed by only the surname. This I'm sure took much time but is one of the most helpful things about a genealogy book as it allows the reader to search with little effort.

An excellent book, accessible to the layman (provided he's studied the poem), but by one of the finest and most rigorous Beowulf scholars. Note that Professor Robinson is listed as simply "Fred Robinson" for this book, but "Fred C. Robinson" elsewhere on Amazon

As there are so many Blue Ridge patterns, I found that I had seven reference books to use in finding names for the patterns I owned. All of the books were useful. If you are serious collector, you will need this book. It is catagorized by the edge types of the plates.
I am going to sell my copy which is NEW as I no longer need it.