Alabama Books

BREAKHEART HILL

I have now read and ENJOYED two of Thomas H. Cook's books. The first one was RED LEAVES, and now this one. They are both full of thrills and surprises! What great movies his books would make! I swear while I was reading I could hear thrilling, mysterious, nerve-wracking music playing in the background! Awesome read!!!!

The place is Choctaw, Alabama, in l962. Kelli Troy is the new girl in town and most of the local boys have never met anyone quite like Kelli. She is beautiful, kind, smart, out-spoken. Most of the boys have fallen for her, but in particular -- someone who is truly in love with Kelli is Ben Wade, who narrates the story.

Kelli is found beaten to a pulp on Breakheart Hill. This one incident is the backbone of the book. The author takes you in the past, in the present, back and forth, forth and back, making you reread and question and be shocked at what is happening to all the people in Choctaw. The format of writing is not confusing, but I found myself going back and rereading passages just to make sure I had things correct! I also found myself getting more and more involved in this book, practically and truly sitting on the edge of my seat more than once.

All phases of the book are superb and thrilling. There is never a dull moment, the characters are great and believeable. I kept changing and changing and changing my mind as to who attacked Kelli constantly. And guess what? I was WRONG. And SURPRISED and SHOCKED!!!!!!

This author takes the reader down so many paths and you don't want to get off those paths. But then you leave that path because the author is teasing the reader and dangling yet another carrot out there to entice you along and make you a nervous wreck reading this book! This book really makes you THINK and do nothing but enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

The ENDING is a total SHOCK and I never in a million years saw this one coming! WOW!!! WHAT! WHY! and HUH! all crossed my mind instantly!

Thomas H. Cook has many books out there and many fans. Count me in on both! I HIGHLY recommend this book!

Thank you!

Pam

This marvelous book should be taught as literature. Beautifully written and plotted with believable characters' trauma and responses developed over half a lifetime.

Town doctor Ben Wade narrates the sad history of Kelly Troy, a bright, intelligent girl who moves into a small Southern community, both shocking it with her outspoken views on segregation and charming it with her natural vivacity before she is tragically attacked on top of Breakheart Hill. Ben falls deeply in love with her, and author Thomas H. Cook is very good at depicting the black mood he falls into when his love is not returned. The narrative moves back and forth in time, skillfully manipulating our expectations. I thought I knew what had happened, became increasingly sure of it as the novel progressed, then had to revise my beliefs when I came to the final devastating pages. This is a excellent suspense novel.

I'm not much into the Suspense/Mystery genre, but this book literally had me on the edge of my seat. I've read several other Thomas H. Cook books and none of them are able to stack up to this one.

This is the haunting story of Kelli Troy told in a series of flashbacks by the town doctor, Ben Wade. It is about the people that were changed forever, after a violent incident involving Kelli that occurred on Breakheart Hill. The climax will leave you reeling! It was completely unexpected and I was left in shock for several days after finishing the book. I even had to go back and re-read some of the passages and chapters to understand just exactly what happened.

This is a powerful story about betrayal, violence, and ultimately, about the power of love.

I was enthraled by this book. This was the first of this author that I had read. I could hardly put it down, the writing was incredible.

And then the ending came and it was as if all the air went out of the balloon. Lame, weak, stupid, words fail me.

This guy writes well but someone needs to supply him with a plot that works. What a sad waste of time to read this book.

Okay, if you want southern literature at its finest, most elite level, immediately go browse Faulkner. BUT, if you simply want a good read, in a southern setting, with all the vernacular and colloquialisms that make you feel like you're sipping iced tea on your grandmother's front porch, and you want to read the whole caboodle in one weekend or beach trip, then buy, buy, buy. Buy one book in the series for each vacation you plan to take this year.

Lucy Adams, author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny

This series of books were a wonderful delight to read, we her fans miss her dearly and hope she is writing the rest in heaven. Highly recommend, your day will be brighter for each book you read!

This series is a MUST READ! These books are so funny and frantic you can't put them down. Get them all, read and reread till you laugh your socks off!

I bought this book a year ago and just recently picked it up again to read--again! Oh, sure, I knew 'whodunit', but the story and the characters were just fun to revisit. I love the way Anne George portrays the two sisters. Her characters seem like neighbors and her writing is most entertaining. I won't donate this one to library just yet....

Patricia Ann (Mouse) and Mary Alice (Sister) are sisters living in Birmingham, Alabama and though they love each other they have very little in common. That disparity in their personalities though is what makes these books so much fun, because their little spats and the tricks that they play on each other tend to drive the plot and are usually hilarious. Understanding the relationship between the two is therefore critical to enjoying this series so I would heartily suggest that you read these books in order since the first book provides a lot of the history necessary for the reader to reach that understanding.

In this entry Sister convinces Mouse to attend an art showing featuring a group of "primitive" artists from the area. Much taken by the beauty of the art they find at the showing the sisters are very surprised the next day when they learn of the death of the young owner of the gallery of an apparent heart attack. Apparent is the key word here and once again the sisters are drawn into the mystery, not by curiosity but by the involvement of one of Mouse's former students who turns to her former teacher for help. Being a retired teacher can apparently be a dangerous thing.

Most of the recurring characters are introduced in the first book but they are filled out a little more in this entry and unlike the characters in some "cozy" mysteries these people are very believable. You may in fact find that you know some of these people, or someone very much like them, they just have different names and don't live in Birmingham. One new character in this book is Sister's overweight and very spoiled cat named Bubba. Bubba has his own heating pad on the kitchen counter where he comfortably lounges away the days. He just sits there and waits to be adored and Mary Alice provides that in plentiful doses. That is, when she isn't busy being a sex slave for Santa at the mall. No, I'm not going to explain that statement, you will just have to read the book.

The most pleasant thing about this book and this series is that you will find yourself laughing out loud but at the same time this author doesn't sink to the slapstick level that many other authors in this genre do. The characters are not only believable but you will learn to care about them and worry when they get hurt. You are also impressed by how caring these people are and it is that caring nature that leads these snooping sisters to the solution of the crimes involved in this book. Murder it seems is not the only game afoot in the iron city.

After 60 pages, i got the idea already: she's bored with her husband and most of her life. maybe something more interesting happens later, but i stopped there.

This lovely novel is laughing out loud funny, yet touching. It is beautifully plotted, as the narrator/protagonist gradually clues us in and our view of her reality changes. People who don't believe God has a sense of humor would be happier to give this one a pass.

I like this genre of book- middle-age woman suddenly finding herself lost in life & begins exploration. I just couldn't help but have a difficult time in finding a lot of originality within the pages.
I wanted it funnier & there are parts I think could've been, but simply fizzled. I found it particularly amusing when our heroine went back home for a visit & had to share the same roof with her sister's many exotic, talking birds.
Not much stood out in this book. It was okay, but I was expecting at least a bit more boundary-pushing going on. Not just a home visit spent looking back on first loves then finally figuring out that your present home w/ hubby is not so bad.

I had a very difficult time getting into this book. The characters were shallow, the plot undeveloped, and overall a complete waste of time. I would expect "searching for self" books to be a little more deep and rich than this poor read.

I probably should of listened to the reviews I read on this book before I started it. Most people here didn't care much for it, but I thought it sounded like great southern reading...well I was wrong. This was one of the dullest books I've read in a long time.

The only reason I'm giving this 2 stars is beacause of Wanda McNabb, the one character in the book that I liked. The rest of the cast was so one dimensional and drab that I barley made it through. Jessie turned out to be just a predictable bored housewife.

Overall, this is definitely not a book I'd recommend. It's just a winey account of an upper middle-class wife who's tired of the normal hum-drum of her life. There's absolutely better reading out there.

I really like the book The Journal of Biddy Owens. It was about a boy from Birmingham Alabama at the age of 17 he was playing on a Negro league team called the Black Barons. They played on away team fields or their home field Rickwood. The Black Barons had to travel all around the United States to play against 11 different Negro league teams and some Rookie teams. There where some many talented ball players on the team and there was one who was the leader who is the second baseman named Piper. They where a very outgoing team like going to restaurants and meeting new people. The team mad it all the way to the championship. I liked the author because he used very descriptive words and the best was that he uses dates and not chapters. I would recommend this book because it was very well written and descriptive.

This book is about a 17 year old boy named Biddy Owens. He is an African American and is the equipment manager for the Birmingham Black Barons. The year was 1948 and he lived in Alabama. The Black Barons were a team that at the time played in the Negro Leagues. Biddy had always been fascinated with baseball and had always wanted to play as a regular player. He always felt left out just running errands and keeping score. The head coach named Piper knew that so every now and then in practice Piper would let Biddy jump into right field. Piper said though that if he wanted to be on the team though, he would have to put on a few pounds because of him only weighing 135. Biddy started getting better and better and got his weight up until they finally let him join as what they called a regular. That year the Birmingham Black Barons made it to the Negro League World Series. In that series the Black Barons lost every single game. Biddy realized that he wasn't very good, but he didn't care because he had such a love for baseball. In the end the Barons season ended and Biddy got invited to come back and play again next year. I recommend this book to anyone who likes following a diary/journal and to people who especially like baseball.

Read a homerun hitting book about baseball. It is the Negro Leagues and it is the journal of Biddy Owens. It is about a 17 year old boy that is the team equipment manager of the Birmingham Black Barons. He sometimes gets to play right field and hit the ball too. He goes from city to city with the team to baseball games.
The conflict is that the Blacks have to play baseball in their own league and in some cities they go to they can't go into certain bathrooms, they can't go into certain stores, and they can't even drink out of certain water fountains. Later in the book the white people realize that black people can do things just as well as white people can, so the white leagues draft some black people into their league to play in the major leagues with the white people.
I would recommend people that enjoy baseball read this book because you could read a lot about the history of baseball and how different it was in 1948 compared to how it is now. You could learn about how the leagues were separated and how they come together to form one league.

This book makes you want to play a game of baseball with friends!

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I chose to read Biddy Owens by Walter Dean Myers because I thought it would be fun and interesting to read. The cover of this book looked like the best biography out there. After reading this book, I felt like playing a good game of baseball because this story described the game like no other! This story was in a way what I expected it to be, but in a way wasn't what I had bargained for. It was what I thought it would be like because it was jam packed with action about all the games Biddy Owens played. It was not what I thought it would be like however, because it also had details about their home life. I definitely don't feel the same about this book because I thought it was going to just be about baseball but it wasn't. It was also about how black people were discriminated in 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama.

The main character of this biography's name is Biddy Owens. He is at age 17 years old, 5 foot 10 inches tall but only weighs 135 pounds when this story takes place. He is an equipment manager, a scorekeeper, an errand boy, and sometimes right fielder. This book takes place in 1948 Birmingham, Alabama. This story is about Biddy Owens and when he played for the Black Barons. It is also about his home life. This is a biography written in first person by Walter Dean Myers.

I liked this book because it had two parts to it, it described baseball back then but it also described black discrimination and home life back then, and I like that because it came from Biddy Owens that had experienced both of those.

I liked this book a lot! And I would definitely recommend it to a friend. I think this book would be appropriate for anybody at the age of 10 or up.

I would give this book a four-star rating.

Scott Pendelton Collins is a true american patriot. In this book he faces many hardships that would make many men runaway with their tails between their legs. He fights through one of the most well known battles of World War Two, D-Day and his company aids in the capture of the French city of St.Lo, and many key cities along the way. He has to walk endless miles and be ready for unexpected attacks, as well as have to be ready to fight with a 30 minute notice. He is hesitant on making friends because he knows that they or he could die at any time. He witnessed many of his new friends die on the beach on D-Day. He also reads about one of his friends deaths in a casuality report. He says the war has changd him in many ways, some good and some bad, and he doesn't think he will ever be able to forget the constant boom of the arterilly fire for both sides, allies and germans.
Scott fights for his family back home and his friends, but he also fights to defend many people in Europe he has never met. He steps in and fight risking his life for people he has never met and for people who can't fight for themselfs. He has the power to fight and he fights, this makes him a true patriot, fighting not only for his faily and friends, but for people he hasn't met and for his nation that he loves. Even through all his fighting he has to give up the right to tell his parents anything about where he is and what he's doing which he sacrifices knowing that what he is fighting for is well worth the sacrifice. He is willing to make the biggest sacrifice anyone can make for his country which is something only a true american patriot would do.

The eloquence of composition surely necessitated infinite use of superlatives and verbs, resulting in a requisite painstaking remostrance to the reader, thus fettering the effusion and disembogulation of the document. In other words, wouldn't it have been better to just leave all of the fluff out of the book and just write as if the reader is someone other than the Queen of England? If you can weed through all of excessive use poems and verbs, it's a halfway decent book

This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.

UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.

Let us Now Praise Famous Men, in all its poetry and prose, reminds me of an epic, like the Hindu Mahabharata or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The lyrical narrative reveals just as much, if not more about Agee, than his subjects. His writing style excludes his subjects as readers.

His prose, which tends to be lofty and cerebral, is also beautiful and brilliant. But, I often wondered, who he was
writing for? The New Yorker audience? The distance in his observations often left me feeling cold. I imagine these hardworking sharecroppers exhibiting some joy, some evidence of warmth, of hope. But I had difficulty finding it in Agee's voice.

The length of Agee's sentences and paragraphs were long, each containing an entire scene, and I labored through them, hoping sleep would not steal me from a passage I might not finish. It was as though Agee too, was afraid sleep would come and steal him from his mission, and so kept hacking away at each sentence, adding commas and colons and semi-colons, lingering his thoughts across the page.

Whatever level of consciousness Agee existed, I could not hang with him for any more than a couple of sentences, as I would fall off the page and have to find my way back into the scene. Where was I? You get the picture...

Agee also uses parenthesis and colons, often not giving his parenthesis a mate: (This struck me as rather unusual and often, cold and detached--more like a voyeur. Did he fabricate his own method of communication using punctuation or was this being done elsewhere at the time? I felt left out of his thoughts when he did this, like when two people are communicating via sign language and you can't make out a word they're saying. Was he doing this in a way to urge us to "think," to stretch beyond the ordinary conventions and try something on that is foreign and unfamiliar, like his subjects and their hardship?

Excellent editon of this wonderful, classic work. A series of visual and verbal snapshots of the South as a third world country, the South of the 1930's.

James Agee's painstaking and honest masterpiece is an exercise in empathy. It is a beautiful, tortured writing that speaks to both the deplorable conditions of the Depression-era souther sharecropper and the humanity of trying to present them in a favorable light.

Agee's writing style is at times erratic-- which helps to give the book its character. It is often self-doubting, as Agee calls himself a spy and frequently second guesses his role in accurately reporting the families' lives. Beautifully done and a groundbreaking classic in ethnographic fieldwork-- a must read!

The book has great photos and text, the work itself is questionable. I reminds me of being a sophomore in design school. Much of the work is by the students and it's a bit overdone and not always as practical as one would hope.

After reading this book, I for one would loved to have worked at Rural Studio under him. But the stories and the student work is what completes the book. If every community had a "Rural Studio" of their own no community would have homeless. The pictures are also fantastic, I can't wait to buy the next book.

The evidence of Mockbee's brilliance and compassion. Proof positive that Mockbee deserved all the awards and acclaim. Great pictures of both the architecture and the house recipients. I love this book and share it often.

It has been nearly two years since the AutoCAD disappeared from my desktop. When I dropped by a new bookstore near my home, I looked for the architectural section. It is because I felt that I got too far away from architecture, my original work area.

But most architectural books were still in their old-fashion: planning manuals, master architects' theories, works of recent architects and architectural histories. In addition, some others are focused on the architects' political(?) intention. Consequently, I could hardly find a meaning of such publications, meaning that could be understood even by the general public.

This book gave me a meaning in two aspects; an architect should do his social responsibility and an architect should participate actively in communication with the general public like Sang Lim Lee, an architect who translated the book to Korean.

The style of writing is rough as is shown in blogs. But, in other words, it can be understood easily by the general public. We can see Mockbee's work both with a view of respect and a view of jealousy. Nevertheless, I would like to focus on his achievements in communication with regional community and in giving his students significant opportunities. His vision has not degenerated into profit-seeking one and has been sustained by his successors until now.

After reading this book, I got to think that an architect should not be exempt from cause related marketing.

Maybe the most important architectural idea since the series of pattern language treatises by Christopher Alexander. I think this is a must read for anyone involved with real estate development. Surely a model for New Orleans. I'm planning to take a trip and pay homage. Mr. Mockbee was a genius.

Former Chief Justice Roy Moore is one of the nations leading scholars on Constitutional Law (period)! The bottomline line here is that Judge Moore was denied the constitutional right to acknowledge God. The same court that recognized God by openning with prayer the day of his trial, fired him from his position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for doing the same (ACKNOWLEDING GOD)!!!! How do I know? Because was there at the trial. Then, Attorney General Bill Pryor asked the Judge point blank and I quote "IF YOU RESUME YOUR DUTIES AS CHIEF JUSTICE, WILL YOU CONTINUE TO ACKNOWLEDGE GOD NO MATTER WHAT ANY PUBLIC OFFICIAL TELLS YOU"? I often wonder who Bill Pryor was acknowledging when he placed his hand on the Bible as he was sworn into office? Simply put, Judge Moore recognizing that fact that this country was founded on Godly principles and that our founding fathers knew this. The reason he was ordeered by the court to remove the monument was due to the fact that a couple of lawyers from the Southern Provery Law Center said they were offended by the monument when thet saw it in the Rotunda of the Judicial Building and that it was placed near the restroom where they had to pass it to get there! Again, how do I know this? I was at that trial as well. Chief Justice Moore knows alittle bit about the law, an knew that the court didn't have the right to order him to remove the monument, so the fight began. Despite the thousands of people throughout Alabama and the country that supported him, he lost this battle because of the conspiracy on the hill to get rid of him. In closing, read this book with an open mind and put yourself in his shoes, then ask yourself, What would I have done? What makes this book a great book, is the fact that everything in it is based on (actual true events) that happened.

In Alabama Judge Moore was not allowed to acknowledge the Judeo-Christian God and His ten commandments as being the foundation for our laws, something that is easily demonstrable and clearly our heritage. Judge Moore simply exposed the hypocrisy of a judicial system that acknowledges the Judeo-Christian God by opening in prayer and swearing oaths on a Bible, but prohibits acknowledging God in our historical foundation for law as he did. Judge Moore further demonstrated their logically fallacious reasoning in that they would not allow him to display the commandments, citing the establishment clause, but they refused to define the key word "religion" in this clause. So in effect, they decided that he violated a clause that they were unwilling to define. In doing so Judge Thompson actually stated that he found what Judge Moore did "religiously offensive." How ironic considering Thompson would not even define the word.

Simply put, every law and liberty upon which this country was founded is based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. The secular humanist liberal progressives do not want the American public to recognize that. They point to a few secular oriented statements, but fail to point out that the great preponderance of the evidence points toward biblical foundations for our laws and liberties. Facts like, 1/3 of the quotes in the books and papers written by founding fathers are Bible verses, that 52 of the 55 were regular in church attendance, and that the prolific use of references to God in official documents points to the fact that their view of the establishment clause was far different than the secularist of today that wishes to ban all such reference. Even the Declaration of Independence that established our liberty to be an independent nation states that our rights come from the Creator and because of that they are unalienable (absolute, not awarded by human power, not transferable to another power, and incapable of repudiation). This knowledge interferes with the humanist agenda to change laws and liberties as we humans progress to a so-called higher form of liberal society by casting off the shackles of these Creator endowed rights. But of course this is anarchy, for there are no humanistic standards for right and wrong that can be agreed upon by millions of discordant people each serving their own self-interest. Outside of the words of a revelatory God such as we find in the Bible nothing can be said to be inherently right or wrong. Furthermore, concepts like separation of church and state, freedom of speech, rule of law, juvenile restrictions, bearing false witness, sanctity of life, and marriage, are in and of themselves biblical concepts. They flow from and through that particular belief system.

The secular humanistic viewpoint is also hypocritical since it is itself a religious belief system. As it has been aptly said, there can be no separation of church and state for the secular humanist, for the state is their church. The establishment clause prohibits government interference with the free exercise of religion. By banning all acknowledgement of God by government officials, even when it is based on clear historical reference, the government is interfering. Even a world famous atheist that recently converted to theism because of the powerful argument to design from the plethora of discoveries in genetics and molecular cell biology says the liberal activist judges in the U.S. have interpreted the constitution the wrong way. Antony Flew said "the Supreme Court has utterly misinterpreted the clause in the Constitution about not establishing a religion: misunderstanding it as imposing a ban on all official reference to religion." Although a theist, he is only barely so. This guy hopes there is not an afterlife and does not like any organized religions (including Christianity), which makes him an especially credible witness to what is going on in this country.

The facts are clear, there is a faction that is currently trying to establish secular humanism as our national religion, and they are using state agency to do so. Will the American populace tolerate the complete secularization of society through government supported, communistic social policy dependency and its associated philosophical indoctrination into the state sponsored religion of secular humanism? Liberals don't want you to know that behind all the smoke and mirrors of political rhetoric and banter, this is the true battle raging in 21st century America.

Are our laws and liberties going to be subject to the whims of secular humanist progressives, or shall they remain in the domain of the constitution and its amendments as set forth with the original intent of the framers? We stand at a crossroads as we begin the 21st century. Is America going to become the brave new world of the liberal with all the moral norms of the jungle, or are we going to be a constitutional republic founded upon biblical principles, the same principles that made this nation great for its first 200 years. This is the generation that must choose. Read Roy's book, it is an eye opener, but don't expect those of the secular humanist persuasion to give it a good review.

Wow, finally the whole story. It is hard to believe that men with as much courage, backbone, and strong morality still exist in America. This, folks, is the story of a modern American HERO. Nowadays, true heroes are ignored, blacklisted, put in jail, harassed, made fun of, and purposely misunderstood. Moore is no exception, as this story points out. In the meantime, I will be helping this man become the next governor of Alabama.

Thank you, Judge Moore for your uncompromising stand in regard to following the Constitution, and the rule of law. It's so easy these days to compromise, and take the easy path. It's refreshing to see a man with backbone and courage, who counts the cost, and still does the right thing! You present your case explaining the foundations of the Constitution and rule of law with crystal clarity. You're truly an inspiration. In the ages to come, we will find Judge Moore hanging out with Jefferson, Washington, Adams...and the rest of our great nation's founders.

To those who believe in Jesus and familar with the history of our America will understand this book.

To those who do not believe in Jesus and care little about our nation's history will hate this book, just as Jesus was hated.

America has become pluralistic. A nation of many gods and idolotry. We worship anything and everything but the one and only God of Abraham, the Alpha and Omega, the great I am and Lord of the universe. We refuse to worship God Almighty because of pride and fear of rules. The liberal mindset of America today has violated the 2nd commandment -- thou shall not have make a graven image (idolotry). We have made a god to suit ourself, created our own rules and removed the once understood 10 commandments. Then we wonder why our country has so many problems with crime and immorality. We have forgot from where we came.

[...] Where will you go when you die? Are you Good enough to go to heaven?

F5 is a really good non-fiction book that reads like the best type of fiction -- action, adventure, thriller, family drama. It's the true-life accounts of what many people lived through in April 1974, when the US suffered the deadliest outbreaks of tornadoes on record.

I read this book in a day, mostly because I didn't want to stop reading once I had started. Mark Levine has truly done his research, but he's written the story of these tornadoes in a way that never seems overbearing or gets so bogged down in pure science that you want to stop reading.

A great book and highly recommended.

In telling this story of "the most violent tornado outbreak" in known history, Levine manages a unique combination of meticulously-researched reconstruction of events and a novelistic approach to pacing and description. Although there is some fascinating technical detail about the formation and lifecycle of tornadoes, the human dimension is paramount here; Levine puts the reader into the story so convincingly that it's hard to believe that these events played out over 30 years ago. Recommended.

I enjoyed this book despite it being a little slow at times. The author does an excellent job of making you feel you know the characters albeit in a detached, history book sort of way. It takes a while to get to the actual event of the tornado which could easily bore anyone looking for an adventure romp. However, if you are looking for an in-depth, comprehensive account of a major weather event you will enjoy this book. It left me feeling very grateful that we have the current warning systems in place against severe weather.

As a fan of disaster stories, I opened this book with anticipation. A natural disaster I had never read about coupled with a noted author...well, my anticipation was better than the actuality. The book is, frankly, bland. Everything about it - the reporting, the prose, the arrangement - is all ok, but that's all it is. OK. I expected a lot more from this combination. And why the author felt it necessary to spend three pages toward the end of the book talking about the streaker at the Academy Awards that year is totally beyond me. However, that is about the ONLY section of the book that truly engaged my emotions.

I thought the book was poorly organized and hard to follow, and was more of a political tome than reporting; I was very disppointed. I lived as a young adult during the period when the events in this book took place, but I did not recognize the America that the author described. I thought the book was about tornadoes; I guess the author felt he had to get some things off of his chest. Maybe he does, but I hope next time he works his issues out in private.

The book that I received was brand new, in wrap and everything. I couldn't have asked for a better purchase. And the book itself was very insightful and educational; I thoroughly enjoyed the material.

Longtime author and journalist Gaillard has written a thorough account of the Civil Rights movement as it happened in the state of Alabama. From the Montgomery bus boycott to Bloody Sunday in Selma, some of the most pivotal events of the time took place in the heart of Dixie.

What sets this book apart from others is the fact that the author shares some of the stories of lesser known figures of the time. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, for example, gets more coverage here than in most books on the movement. The Birmingham leader is one of many who was fighting the fight long before more famous folks like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to town, bringing the glare of the spotlight with him.

We also read of the accomplishments of Sam and Amelia Boynton, a husband and wife team, who began fighting for the right of themselves and other blacks in their county to vote starting as early as the 1930s. Amelia would later stand as one of the "courageous eight," a group who defied a court order forbidding civil rights activities, to invite Dr. King to come to Selma.

The tension between local leaders and the better known national leaders figures large in this volume, but Gaillard is fair to all parties involved. While King's presence in a city brought national exposure, he was regarded by many to be too cautious, too willing to negotiate with white political leaders and business interests. Younger blacks, in particular, were ready for things to change more quickly than did some of the national leadership.

The book also tells the story of dozens of foot soldiers in the movement, like Viola Liuzzo, a white mother of five from Detroit who was slain by Klansmen while ferrying freedom marchers outside of Selma. We also read of black laborer J. D. Cammeron, and of the indignities he suffers as he is involved in scuffles with police in Gadsden.

While many books have been written about seminal events in the movement, this volume's appeal comes from the personal stories it tells. This is a tale about real people, everyday men and women who, through individual acts of bravery become an army that strives for collective gains. Nearly any reader interested in the Civil Rights Era will find something of value in this well-written offering.

The other night I was watching an episode of American Experience on public television (concerning Bobby Kennedy's handling of the Freedom Riders), and again I found myself reminded of what a fine education Cradle of Freedom had been for me when I first read it. It put a confusing and conflicted era of our history into sharp focus. I am of a younger generation than some of the previous (more crusty and chip-carrying) reviewers; I was born the year that Charlotte, North Carolina implemented forced bussing to integrate its schools. However, when I first read Cradle of Freedom, I read parts of it aloud to my father on a long car trip. He had lived through the events of that time, albeit in a distanced South Carolina fashion, and he too realized things he had not before, the arrangement and dependence of event, the small gesture that snowballed into something grandiose, or horrible. To me, that is the true test of this kind of book; it clarifies history for you, and does so in a lasting way, such that years later, its information is there for you to draw upon again. It's that effect that makes us smarter, more sensitive people than those who went before.

I have not read all the other books the other reviewers on this site have mentioned. I am not a particularly gifted speller, and probably don't use the semicolon correctly. But I did read Frye Gaillard's book, and it meant something to me, and I think it's a shame we've used this site to become so personal.

I find it curious that a previous reviewer made a point of calling our attention to the name, Marti Turnipseed on page 138 in Cradle of Freedom as being misspelled. Looks to me like Mr. Gaillard spelled the name correctly.

But what I find more puzzling is his criticism of Mr. Gaillard's depiction of the racially charged atmosphere of the era. As a college student returning to visit family, traveling south at night along Highway 76, my tensions and fears did indeed, `become far worse' upon approaching the Alabama state line. A landscape familiar by day, under the cloak of a moonless night appeared as a, `rolling silhouette...shadowy...empy and vast' and held a distinct sense of foreboding for me. Although I knew there to be towns and farms nearby and had traveled the road many times, there was the constant sense of danger present.

The previous reviewer also bemoans the absence in the book of certain well known civil rights activists, eventhough from the onset, Mr. Gaillard's stated purpose of the book is to acquaint the reader with the little known `foot soldiers' of the movement.


Therefore, I'll have to beg the reviewer's pardon. Could it be the reviewer, unlike Mr. Gaillard, did not come of age during those turbulent and fearful times? Or is it that perhaps, a man's just gotta overreview when a man's just gotta overreview. On the positive side, it appears the reviewer has succeeded in generating quite an interest in Cradle of Freedom and the author - I certainly enjoyed reading it again and will continue to highly recommend it.

A feel for the right details and deft, interpretive writing bring to history what DNA testing brings to innocence and guilt.

In his new book, "Cradle of Freedom," Charlotte author Frye Gaillard takes readers on the expected epic tour of some of the iconic moments of the civil rights movement, all in his native Alabama - from the Montgomery bus boycott and the Burmingham church bombing to the savagery of bloody Sunday atop Selma's Edmond Pettus Bridge.

To this Alabamian, Gaillard does us one better. He wipes away the dust. He cuts through the veneer of familiarity and takes us into the spit, sweat and marrow of 40-year-old events.

Here flows history's purest relevance. Here cinematic depictions of good vs. evil yield to a more riveting truth: how so much of what transformed the South hung on the words and actions of a few all too human characters when it came time for them to speak or act.

When they did, Gaillard's reporting and writing takes us there, to that place where fear and heroism share a room.

Consider Gaillard's account of the Freedom Riders. The biracial groups, which took to the roads in the early 1960s to test the desegregation of buses and lunch counters, received their first beatings in Rock Hill. But like Huck and Jim, two other adventurers floating unknown currents, the danger grew as they traveled farther south.

"It became worse at the Alabama line," Gaillard writes "for it was nightime now, and the land was a shadowy, rolling silhouette, empty and vast, and it was easy to see how a man could disappear."

The eerie beauty of this sentence serves two audiences. For those familiar with the era, it foreshadows the violence we know is waiting at the bus stations down the road.

For those delving into this history for the first time, Gaillard's prose, controlled and still rich, builds a riveting narrative of what he calls, "the powerful clash of ideas, that made us ask who we really wanted to be."

And as a member of a prominent Mobile family, Gaillard writes insightfully of the tragic contradiction of so many whites of this era - well meaning on many fronts, yet capable of extraordinary inhumanity when their cultural traditions were challenged.

Yet, Gaillard's exploration of this dichotomy, which helps humanize all but the worst of the segregationists, leads to the one flaw of his excellent work. He lets former Alabama Gov. John Patterson off too easy.

George Wallace, Patterson's successor, is the far better known of the two obstructionist leaders. But Patterson, in office from 1958 to1962, had the first chance to prepare his state for far more peaceful change. Instead he threw gas on the fire.

First he ran a racist campaign to beat the then-moderate Wallace. Then as governor, Patterson used actions and words to incubate violent resistance to change.

Patterson, who has outlived Wallace, continues his campaign to redefine his legacy, and Gaillard gives him to much room. He portrays Patterson as someone who always knew better, who knew desegregation was inevitable, whose only goal was to slow the pace of inevitable change.

Nonsense.
Like Wallace, Patterson consciously set a tone to legitimize the extremism that scars Alabama's reputation. His unforgivable lack of leadership was on full display during the Freedom Rider crisis. And Gaillard's account of a meeting between Patterson and the Kennedy's administration's John Seigenthaler, in which the two men argued over how best to protect the protesters, drives the point home, intentionally or not.

"Far more than the Kennedys," the author writes, "...the governor understood the magnitude of rage - the beast that was waiting out there in the streets.

"He returned to Floyd Mann, his director of safety, and declared once again: `We can't protect them. Tell him, Floyd.'

"Mann, however, took them all by surprise. `Governor,' he said, `you tell me to protect them, and I will protect them.' "

It was that easy. Yet Patterson said it was too hard.

Gaillard - and history - tells us otherwise.

What was it like for a young lady to attend college in the deep south in the 1950's? It's a world with which I was totally unfamiliar until I read the Anne Rivers Siddons coming-of-age novel, Heartbreak Hotel. The main character is Maggie Deloach, a beautiful and popular sorority member who is "pinned" to the campus heartthrob, and is involved in many school activities, including writing for the campus newspaper. You can imagine what happens when she pens an editorial in 1956 Alabama which ostensibly questions the segregationist society.

The characters are interesting and well-drawn, and the setting is evocative of a time long gone. The plot moves along briskly to the beat of the new rock `n `roll music, particularly, as the title suggests, that of Elvis Presley. I was drawn into Maggie's world by Siddons' compelling writing style, and found it difficult to put this book down once I started reading it.

This is a light read , but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It happens at the time I was in college, so I recognized the rules of the house and adult supervision. But I was in the North and wasn't aware of the problems these girls faced, integration.
The story tells of Maggie and her enlightenment. Thank goodness it happened and the book ends hopefully, that she will go on and write more about fixing the problem.

This is only the third Anne Rivers Siddons book I've read; the other two were King's Oak and Peachtree Road. Heartbreak Hotel is a loosely autobiographical novel that draws from Siddons's experiences as a columnist for the Auburn University student newspaper. It was very interesting for me to track Siddons's development as a writer by comparing Heartbreak Hotel with the two later novels of hers that I've read. All three books have common elements and styling; but there is a balance, a proportion, and a pacing in King's Oak and, especially, Peachtree Road which is just not present in Heartbreak Hotel. It doesn't feel like a connected narrative -- it has a choppiness and a lack of rhythm that makes it feel more like a string of random scenes peopled by the same recurring characters. When you read Peachtree Road -- not my definition of fine literature, but a very strong and haunting work that Siddons obviously put her whole heart into -- you wonder where 800-plus pages went and how you got to the end as fast as you did. When you read Heartbreak Hotel -- at most, half the length of Peachtree Road -- you're getting impatient with Maggie and her whole sorry supporting cast and their continuing string of collegiate misadventures before you're three-quarters done with the book. But, objectively, Heartbreak Hotel is a modestly enjoyable experience: a budding writer's tale of a budding writer, and a chance for Siddons fans to see how it all began.

Siddons is a talented and readable writer, but this 1976 novel is trite and predictable. It is one of a long line of Southern sorority girls experiencing liberal epiphany novels, set at Southern colleges in the decade from 1950 to 1960, and it offers no fresh insights, and no surprises. All the stock characters appear and act as if they are rigidly following expected plot lines. You have the unawakened but beautiful sorority queen, with the germ of liberal understanding slumbering in her outsider heart. You have the Northern sexually liberated female student, who opens mental doors for the main character. There is the primal blonde, luring hotblooded males into combat, meeting her fate in the alcohol fueled car crash. Of course there are the rich Delta boyfriend and the poor liberal journalist who are locked in their lifelong rivalry. Do I need to mention the Tenessee Williams parents or the drunken housemother, the vaguely reassuring dean of female students, or the good old boy cracker policeman? The book is a good introduction to Siddons talent, but it dragged on and on, and Maggie's "courageous stand" was ridiculously anticlimactic, and her subsequent actions telegraphed from practically page one. Read Peachtree Road instead.

Oh yes, some would say that this story and its characters are "trite and cliched", but, folks, if you grew up in the south in the 50's and 60's you cannot help but recognize yourself - or gain a brilliant glimpse of a southern girl and all that was expected of her. The last thing your parents wanted was for you to, Heaven forbid, have any thoughts of your own - especially if they were in opposition to the standards of the time. Those were the days when you cared what your parents thought of you and you bore bitter consequences if you were a disappointment. It took a lot of courage to venture away from the norm. Ann Rivers Siddons paints vivid pictures of the small town and college settings and the workings of an evolving young mind in that era.

As an avid fan of Mrs. Siddons, I received a flash from Amazon that her new book, "Off Season" is coming out August 13th, so, in preparation for that and because it seems like an eternity since her last book came out, I immediately went down the list of her books to see if there was anything I had not read. Heartbreak Hotel was the only one - and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If this was Siddons' debut novel, she was off to a great start back in 1976 - and she's only gotten better with each novel. After reading Heartbreak Hotel, I will now chomp at the bit until "Off Season" emerges in August.