Alabama Books

There appears to have been a computer glitch here. Walt didn't write a separate book for AppE. There is the Wolfram and Christian 1976 "Appalachian English" and there is the Christian, Wolfram, and Dube 1988 (PADS 74) App-Ozark book, but that is all.

Creek Indian History is one of the best books we have read. It is very informative. We have learned more from this book about our heritage and traditions than we thought possible. Just learning that the dead were buried under the floor of the home was fasinating. It's a book everyone wanting to know about the Creek Indians should read.

Anderson's work synthesizes the results of 30 years of cultural resource archaeological investigations conducted on the US Army's Ft. Polk installation. Located in an upland environment, Ft. Polk is off Louisiana's archaeological beaten path. However, the insights gathered from decades of work have been of immense help in understanding the history and prehistory of central and western Louisiana.

Wow! Check it out - philosophy without pretenses, live without limits. Powerful, and will be thought of and used to guide our perceptions long from now.

I review design of impei and thinkof him. Also, I review theem

This book is truly inspiring. This book contains two separate stories. Try to imagine what it was like in the United States in the years 1939-1946. Try to imagine what it was like for a black man to preach an unpopular message in the South in those years. This was years before the civil rights movement of the early 60's. This man Rosco Jones had amazing courage beyond words. He did not back down to the civil authorities, and continued to preach God's Word. He was arrested many times, and his cases were brought to court. when he lost, he appealed to higher courts. He also received much persecution. He eventually won these cases to have freedom of speech to spread the message of the Good News. The same can be said for Grace Marsh, a white woman. This was before the woman's movement of the 1970's. They won cases for freedom to preach door to door. Next time you think about your freedom of speech, you should thank these people. Whether you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses or not, you can't help admiring these people.

This is a first-rate ethnography of a little known but important community: forward-deployed American solidiers, stationed in Germany at the height of the Cold War. Hawkins mixes profound structural analysis with intimate conversational portraits, to paint a picture of a military community torn between the competing demands of army life and family responsibilities. I used the text in a large undergraduate class, "Cultural Anthropology." The students liked the book very much, and used it to test and apply the concepts they learned earlier in the semester, e.g., "social structure," "kinship," "marriage," "cultural psychology." All in all, we found it be an excellent teaching tool, not to mention an excellent ethnography. I recommend it highly.

Charles W. Nuckolls, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Alabama

The worldwide impact of Rolf Edberg's best-selling "ecophilosophy" On the Shred of a Cloud (1966; Eng. tr. 1969) is still being felt. It was that book, indeed, which first inspired the Swedish delegation to the United Nations to press for what eventually became the Word Conference on the Human Enviroment (Stocklholm, June, 1972).

In Shred, Edberg argues that all the major crises facing mankind - enviromental degredation, overpopulation, mass poverty, political tyranny, war and the threat of atomic annihilation, etc. - were closely interrelated aspects of a single problem, that of man's true nature and his place in the scheme of things.

In this new work, which can be read independently or as a sequel to the earlier one, Edberg bores far deeper into the central question of man's nature. As Professor Lawrence S. Thompson has put it, At the Foot of the Tree is "more than a plea for preservation of our physical surroundings, more than a case against the pollution of a world that had a better destiny than to have its country lanes and lakesides lined with beer cans. Governor Edberg has gone to the crucial point of ecology, the dignity of man. Will the race tolerate swinishness in its personal habits, or will it look towards the life for which all mankind yearns? There is no preaching here, no didacticism only the bare facts about man's problems with hios physical enviroment and himself."
--- from book's dustjacket

While Andrew Lytle is best known for his role with the Nashville Agrarians, he also was an excellent historical novelist. Some of his best works, such as the novel "At the Moon's Inn" and the novella "Alchemy", deal with Spain in the New World. While one would not think colonial Spain would be fertile ground for Lytle's Agrarian vision, his message comes through very clearly in this interesting, insightful and exciting novel.

Lylte examines the ill fated and unproductive De Soto expedition which, in three years, discovered the Mississippi, ravaged the natives of the Southeast and found nothin in terms of treasure, found no colonies and made no converts to Christianity. In an excellent first scene, Lytle has heroes of the Reconquista and the legendary survivor da Vaca warn Soto and his men about what waits for them in La Florida. Lytle then takes the reader through the New World where the Spanish turn their backs on all the glories of Western Civilization and the moral foundations of the Christian faith in search of gold. This is refinforced by memories of Columbus and descriptions of him as an alchemist and a confession from a ghost at the end of the novel. Dreams of fortune can destroy men as they cut the ties of the past and wander in an unfamiliar wilderness. That is certainly a key aspect of Lytle's vision.

The introduction is excellent on Soto and scholarship of that never conquered conquisidor. It is not as good on Lytle and M. E. Bradford's essay on "Alchemy" and "At the Moon's Inn" may be a better place to start. There is also one of the stangest blurbs I have ever seen on a book on the back cover of the Library of Alabama Classics paperback from, of all people, former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida praising Soto. It's fair to say ole Bob did not read the book. Lytle's book is devestating to Soto in this provactive and satisfying novel.

Anyone living in the Southeast (Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee) will find this travel book to be a practical and useful tool. The author, Eleanor Berman, pairs seasonal activities and local attractions with various locales. For me, this opened my eyes to the many enjoyable short trips my family and I can take without going too far from home. The book contains telephone numbers, driving directions and suggestions for accommodations and restaurants that I likely would never have discovered on my own. My family and I have stayed in several of the book's recommended bed and breakfasts and have been delighted. I keep this book handy to refer to for travel ideas. I reccommend it highly as a thorough and "user friendly" guide to travel in the Southeast.