Alabama Books

I have seen the exhibition of the Gee's Bend quilts at the Whitney museum three times. The quilts of Gee's Bend are simple, graphic, and stunning. Although I own the smaller of the Gee's Bend quilt books and the video about the quiltmakers, I find that I want to know and see much more. I have thumbed through this book at the museum and am delighted that it is full of lush photographs of so many more quilts. At the top of my holiday list of things I must have, is this, the larger of the Gee's Bend quilt books.

The Quilts of Gee;s Bend is much more than a beautiful coffee table book. It is that, too, of course. The book is filled with social history of this small place near Selma, Alabama. I've been lucky enough to visit Gee's Bend and see the quilt-making process. The Whitney Museum exhibit must have been wonderful. Sunday Morning on CBS did a story on the exhibit. The quilters traveled to New York for the opening and entertained the guests with their singing. That's what Gee's Bend is like: A rich yet poor stop on the road where women made the best of what they had and turned out great art in the process.

The Quilt's of Gee's Bend exhibit was at the Corcoran in Washington DC earlier this year. I went 3 times with different people. Enjoyed each visit like it was the first! I saw the book then, but I am buying it now. It is informative and inspirational (my mother and I are working on our first quilt together and have others planned). The book has so many examples of the fine workmanship and talent and beauty that grew out of their necessity. Get this book! If you're luck enough to go to the exhibit - do it! - at least once!

I believe Country Home wrote an article about these woman and pictured them and some of the quilts. I found it fascinating! It made me thankful for what I've got and showed me that beauty is everywhere -- its just a matter of how you interpret the world around you. Erin

Exhaustively researched and beautifully crafted, this book provides a much needed insight into the inherent flaws and complication posed by the FBI's informant system. It's historical -- in the sense of looking at historical events -- but it's also extremely relevant to the problems of today.

Gary May is a talented storyteller and his account of what happened to Viola Liuzzo is riveting. I spent Christmas week with his book in hand, taking every opportune moment to continue learning about this young mother's quest to do something right about the civil rights movement and how she was partly the victim of Hoover's FBI. Often, I felt that I was traveling along with Liuzzo as May's tale unfolded - I felt I was in the car when she was murdered. Great book. Couldn't put it down.

Gary May brilliantly tells the story of the murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo on March 25, 1965, and exposes the violent misdeeds of KKK members, who mostly considered themselves to be doing "God's work" when they harrassed, beat, and murdered blacks as well as white citizens who were unfortunate enough to get in the way. The career of the self-centered, attention hungry, redneck informant Gary Thomas Rowe is skillfully retraced, and the ineptitude and negligence of FBI agents and the organization as a whole are exposed. The copy I have is an "advance uncorrected page proof" (review copy) and has frequent spelling and punctuation errors; thus the four star rating. Otherwise, I would have given this book a full five stars, because it is excellent.

Forty years ago, a civil rights movement grew in the south that was opposed by white supremacists who thought blacks should not have equal opportunities in shopping, dining, transportation, and education, and who were ready to use violence to maintain segregation. The murder in Alabama of white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo on 25 March 1965 got the immediate attention of the nation, and of President Johnson, who was proud to be able to tell the nation twenty-four hours later that the murderers had been caught. It was a killing by Klansmen, but not one of those that went unsolved for decades. The only reason the murderers were caught so quickly is that with them was an informant, the FBI's man who had infiltrated the Birmingham Klan branch and who reported the crime and the criminals immediately. Johnson was proud, J. Edgar Hoover was proud, and the informant, Gary Thomas Rowe, was a hero. The problem is that the story is far more confused and Rowe's heroism and the FBI's tactics are far more questionable than they seemed at the time. In _The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo_ (Yale University Press), history professor Gary May has told an exciting story full of ambiguity and of criticism for the FBI, and has described a long-ago society which accepted that skin color was an individual's most important characteristic.

Rowe was recruited by the FBI in 1960; he was a bartender, bouncer and machinist who accurately proclaimed himself a hell-raiser, and so he fit into the Klan. An informant has to act the role of a group member, and this means enthusiastically participating in what the group does, which Rowe did. He worked up the Klan hierarchy and did provide valuable information, but also he participated in brawls along with his fellow Klansmen. He was in the car with three other Klansmen after a Selma-Montgomery march. The shooting wounded a young black civil rights worker and killed the driver, the mercurial 39-year-old mother of five from Detroit, Viola Liuzzo. He was the main prosecution witness in the trial of the other three, but even so, they were eventually found innocent of murder, only being found guilty in federal court of civil rights violations. Rowe's role in the murder is not clearly that of a mere observer and informer. He may have tried to influence the others to call off the chase, but he may also have shot at the car himself, and thus may have been an accessory to the crime. The Liuzzo family was devastated and torn asunder by the murder, and although they had originally joined in the general approbation of Rowe as hero, two decades later they sued the government in a wrongful death lawsuit; the judge threw out the suit because, among other reasons, Rowe was in his estimation not violent or dangerous, but a model public servant. Rowe died in 1998, a bankrupt ne'er-do-well who blamed the FBI for not supporting him in the way he had expected.

Liuzzo's story has been largely forgotten, although she was the only white female civil rights worker to be martyred during the days of demonstrations in the South. This is, however, Rowe's story, and it not only stands as a remarkable recreation of a tumultuous time, but is a cautionary tale for our own time. As May points out, Hoover to his shame used informants as pawns against Martin Luther King and against the movements opposing the Vietnam war, and the FBI has subsequently had its own thugs in the Mafia who were personally guilty of murder and robbery while getting FBI salaries. There are calls for more "human intelligence" in the actions against terrorists, but we should remember that it is not simply a matter of paying snitches. The costs of supporting informants who are supposed to be acting like miscreants, and may do a convincing job in their roles, may be incalculable, and the information gained by such ambiguous means may not be worth the resultant mistrust of government agencies.

This book was required reading for my Civil Rights class. Although at times a bit too detailed and tangent prone, Hemphill's style is very gripping and kept my attention. The way in which the formation and development of Birmingham is disussed, enterpreted, and explained is superb. Hemphill does an excellent job of juxtaposing the racial, economic, and social climate that evolved and gripped the city of Birmingham throughout the years. I would consider this autobiography of sorts a must read for any person interested in issues pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement. Just get through the few dry parts, the rest is well worth the read!

In 1963 Alabama was the site of racial violence: native Hemphill decides here to return to his hometown, to come to terms with his family and life. Leaving Birmingham probes the ethnic relationships in Birmingham past and present, providing an intriguing analysis of the tensions and present-day life.

The reader should note that this book is not a history, but an honest reminiscence by the author. Paul Hemphill was born and raised in a Birmingham that no longer exists, and his story is a sentimental, though often melancholy, remembrance of his journey from childhood to an adulthood marked by his departure from his native city. Unlike other native sons, such as Roy Blount and Howell Raines, who long ago moved to New York and have spent the majority of their adult lives apologizing for having been born in the South, Hemphill offers the reader a painfully honest autobiography that parallels the mutually exclusive forces of change and retrenchment within Birmingham before and after World War II. He presents an insightful glimpse of a city unique in the South, a city created atop one of the richest iron ore deposits in the country, with no antebellum, gentrified past, a tough, muscular city. It is a Birmingham as it truly was, a city divided not in two parts, but three: the Birmingham of poor, legally segregated blacks, the Birmingham of working-class whites who manned the steel, iron and coke factories during their height, and the Birmingham of the Mountain Brook overseers, the representatives of the absentee landlords who owned these factories, the men of a separate community entirely, who publicly stayed above the fray of civil rights strife, all the while stoking and manipulating the blue collar whites to whom civil rights appeared a supreme threat. It was into such a working-class family that Hemphill was born. His descriptions of his hard-working, traditionalist father, his mother and the neighborhood in which he grew up, are perhaps the finest elements of the book. It is evident that this was no easy book for Hemphill to write. He must counter-balance the admiration he holds for his parents and the joys of his childhood, with the ultimate revulsion he felt in adulthood toward a civilization predisposed all along toward heightened brutality. It is not only his personal journey, but the journey of Birmingham from "the Magic City" to "Bad Birmingham"; the journey of Bull Connor from "voice of the Barons" to the "voice of legalized segregation". Hemphill witnessed all of this and it is sadness, not cold judgement, that pervades this book and sets it apart from the many other books written about that city and that time. This reviewer highly recommends this book to anyone who has an interest in gaining a personal perspective of the Birmingham of mid-20th Century America.

I decided to read this book for purely personal motives. Having been raised in California by a father who grew up in Birmingham in the early twenties and thirties, I had a desire to understand this man, my father, who seemed at times to have such radical world views. Reading Paul Hemphill's story, specifically the retelling of details of growing up in a working class family, including the bigoted views his father held, helped me to understand the world that molded many whites prior to the civil rights movement. When chosing this book, I wasn't looking for a dry detailed history but rather an insiders view of what this world of "Birmingham, Alabama" must have been like growing up. Why it created such biogtry? And How can we continue to change? Paul Hemphill, through this book, helped me to understand, what kind of a world Birmingham was, and how it shaped and molded the people who grew up there.

The author expended a tremendous effort in researching the Jeff Davis Legion. He has created an interesting history of this unusual cavalry unit. Any one who is interested in the Confederate Cavalry will enjoy the detail information the author has dug out of the archives.

Amazon says book has 40 pages. It has 325

The author obviously performed a great deal of research in order to extract such detailed and little known facts about the "Little Jeff". Truly a gem for all interested in the Civil War. Highly recommended.

This is the first complete history of The Jeff Davis Legion, initially designated the 2nd Mississippi Cavalry Battalion. Fighting under Jeb Stuart and Wade Hampton it later followed Hampton to Georgia and the Carolinas. Though companies from Georgia and Alabama joined the regiment, it remained officially a "Mississippi" cavalry unit. They were the only Mississippi cavalry to fight as part of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Among the men of the "Little Jeff" were educated elite from Natchez and Savannah and rustic farmers and country tradesmen from Kemper County, Mississippi and Sumpter and Barbour Counties, Alabama. Through first hand accounts we follow these soldiers from their early enthusiasm until camp life and sickness brought war into perspective. They fought their first engagement in late 1861 and from then on fought in most of Lee's campaigns. They were at Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Seven days, Antietam, Trevilian Station, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and countless smaller engagements They sustained some of their greatest losses at lesser known places like Upperville, Funkstown, Stony Creek, and Bentonville.

Readers of this history should come away not only with an accurate characterization of the Confederate cavalryman, but also with an understanding of their place in the overall strategy of Lee's army. The related book, published simultaneously, "Horsemen of the Jeff Davis Legion" gives information taken from the individual cavalryman's service record from the National Archives as well as a wealth of information from other sources about each man. This should be useful as a geneological reference. Also contains statistics related to the Jeff Davis Legion and brief biographies of senior officers associated with it.

Donald A. Hopkins

This book is a valuable resource for students of Eastern European History. Adam Broner's first person narrative skillfully connects the author's personal story with the larger events surrounding his life. The wide scope and long time period provide a neutral perspective and a greater understanding of the events. Broner's personal stories draw the reader into history and bring it to life in a new way. The book would easily fit into a curriculum covering World War II, Communism, Eastern Block History, Anti-Semitism, and particularly Poland. This remarkable biography can be enjoyed by anyone, but it will be especially appreciated by all scholars of history.

This man's story has touched this woman's heart. It is a simple, easy to read, straightforward, historical and personal account of the human and his indomitable spirit. This eye-opening account leaves me with a lifetime education. I am humbled by this man's love for his faith, family and country.

A fine book about the history of these trying times reported by a person that lived the story. It reflects great memory and great research. It should be read by all students now and in the future interested in this period of world history.

Adam Broner's book is a well-written, very readable one person's story of the most important event of the 20th century, World War II. It is a remarkable, I would even say unique story. At that turbulent time, most people let themselves be pushed where the changing fates of war were throwing them. Not so the young Adam Broner. He repeatedly made his own decisions, sometimes risky but right and courageous. The most important of these was to desert the "working battalions" in Siberia, and to join the army fighting the Nazis. It may sound strange, but Adam Broner's story is also unique because it tells the plain truth. He has not adapted his narrative to the now prevalent ideas. Broner simply tells us how it was. A good book. Richard Fenigsen, M.D., Waltham, Massachusetts.

I must say I am biased on my opinion of this book, since the family is part of my heritage. My grandmother is the little girl named Ella who made a doll for the young boy, Hugie. I will reread this book time and time again and pass it onto my children.

Peggy Hansen

A truly inspiring book depicting life at the turn of the century in rural Jacksonville and the surrounding beaches.

Our barrier island of N.E. Florida, stretching from Mayport to St. Augustine, is changing day by day. With the rapid development of business and residential areas, our pristine land has but faded memories. Escape from your daily grind, head for the nearest beach chair and relive a wonderful true story.

It is filled with the struggles of a true native family, living on the edge of swampland, a short distance from where a now famous tiger prowls the TPC/Sawgrass golf course. As a reader, one feels blessed to have all the modern conveniences we now enjoy.

A truly inspiring book depicting life at the turn of the century in rural Jacksonville and the surrounding beaches.

A heartfelt, poetic memoir about a time and place not familiar to most of us.

This tour de force begins in Birmingham, Alabama, in the `50s and `60s, a scene that isn't pretty. With Vulcan, the cuckold, the city's god of choice, and Red Mountain its muddy, staining natural landmark, Birmingham scrapes along, fighting the inevitable times that are a-changin'.
The narrator, Eddie, is a likable young man determined to go to college and build a life different from that of his angry, working class father. To help fund the tuition, Eddie sells his hunting and fishing gear, and he works two jobs. Rather than being exhausted, he is liberated.
In college he revels in literature and philosophy, and he and his friends try to overcome their upbringing's insistence that "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Released from their childhood repression, some of them swing to the extreme, epitomizing the rebellious era with more booze, marijuana, and promiscuity than they can handle. A car accident takes the life of one of them, and the driver loses his wits.
In the midst of social change that's too fast for Eddie to deal with, he is rocked by guilt, fear, and loss of control. But I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll stop here.
Is this book worth reading? Definitely. It reminds me of Ursala Hegi's "Stones from the River" in providing an insider's perspective on a dysfunctional society and Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" in probing the psyche of a woman whose mind refuses to bend to cultural demands. But comparisons aside, this novel stands on its own.

In Red Mountain, Charles Entrekin has masterfully crafted the personal journey of one young man backdropped against the complicated and painful landscape of Birmingham, Alabama, 1965- the unrest, the growing civil rights movement, the tension that simmered in everyone's hearts during this complex time. But the gift in this novel is that the reader is given such an intimate pass into this young man's life, we grow and shift and doubt and rage right along with him. The world is out there changing right before his eyes and as a reader we are pulled into the struggle by the wrists right along with him, we view it through his wide eyes. This window allows for a fresh, relevant take on this dark time and the story is at once timeless and immediate, universal, but so distinctly unique.

The south has always been viewed as more conservative as a whole versus the rest of the country - how did they deal with the cultural revolution of the 1960s? "Red Mountain: Birmingham, Alabama, 1965" is the story of a young couple of this era standing against the backwards thinking, ignorance while pushing for their own idealism, love, and sexual liberation, keystones of the era. A brilliantly written period piece, "Red Mountain: Birmingham, Alabama, 1965" is a top pick for community library collections.

Mr. Givhan tells a great story while keeping you laughing and crying. His is a different style of narrative. Very enjoyable book!

This book is full of emotion! A true Southern Gentleman from the heart. Many men faced the same tragedies, some are better for it and some not. Thanks to Mr. Givhan's southern heritage, he was and is able to cope with the emotions that I am sure he deals with on a day to day basis. The friendship that was concived and the ones that still exist are basied on the family values he has! This comes from a southern heritage, hard work and LOVE from family! This war took from us many special people, and left some here to deal with the TRUTHS that have finally been uncovered all these years! Our Government asked these young men to put their lives on the line for a cause, that I am not sure, was a CAUSE! The cover ups and lies that have been uncovered only make me wonder more about our Government! This book is well worth your time in reading. It made me more aware of this "war". It has stirred up a inquisiviness that I find has me thirsting for more knowledge about this "war", and it also let me know that there is still a "TRUE SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN" living in the south.

I meet the author of this very moving story, in a small horse pasture, in southern Alabama, where we landed our Huey helicopter there in October 2002. We were there to interview John for the documentary film about the Vietnam experience called "In The Shadow of The Blade". It was there that I found a true real life hero. A man of great courage and great faith. I have found his life story to be both a spiritual, as well as historic look at who he was and who he has become. This is a must read for anyone wishing to go deeper into the understanding of the war and how it changed lives forever. John is a mountain of a soul and reading his book will inspire you. I do not think anyone can come away from the reading of his book without gaining much more respect for those men who "danced with the devil" in so many hot LZs in Vietnam. He fought the good fight and and paid the price with the loss of his leg - but he gained so much more heart and soul! This is a must read! I highly recommend it.

This story of one man's journey through life focusing especially on relationships and bonding during war time and the lasting effects this period had on his life moved me emotionally more than once. I learned more about men and war from this book than from my husband who also served in VietNam. I imagine many men and women can relate to this story though not many could tell the story the way John Givhan has. It has humor. It has warmth. It has love. This man searched deep to relate his experiences and it tells the story from an angle only those who have been there could know. But he made me see it all so vividly in my mind and heart. The story does not end when he left VietNam. It continues on to the years and discoveries he made about what really happened to him the day he was hit in a helicopter on a mission in VietNam. Intermixed with his experiences of the war are his experiences of his youth. They could be the memories of anyone's youth but these are his stories of how he grew up and it just happens to be in the south. This is a book on war but also a book on what war has done to this man and to families all over the world.

I learned to swim in the Cahaba River in the 60's, what wonderful childhood memories I have from that river. Dr. Jackson has written an interesting, readable history of the Alabama and Coosa Rivers. However, very little text is given to the Tallapoosa, and even less to the Cahaba. That said, I still enjoyed the book and I agree with the other reviews. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Alabama history.

This well-written book is a superb rendering of history and southern landscapes. Mr. Jackson synthesizes a vast amount of material in a seamless narrative that flows as strong and unimpeded as Alabama's once wild rivers. The chapters on frontier Alabama are especially good. You come away from this fine work with a keener sense of loss but also with a deeper understanding of this place we call the South, and you want to fight to help save and restore the best of it.

In time, this book will serve as a major secondary source for Alabama historians, students of history and researchers. Much like "The Federal Road...", which this writer has previously reviewed, "Rivers Of History" is a scholarly and comprehensive work pertaining to the impact of one of the fundamental elements evident in the progression of Alabama history. From the earliest days of the Mississippi Territory, to the present day, Alabama's rivers have served as both the bloodlines and guide posts of the state - representing demarcation of counties, providing the venue by which Alabama's 19th Century cotton economy could thrive, enriching vast areas of agricultural lands with literally hundreds of tributaries of varying sizes, and allowing for Alabama's intricate network of hydro-electric power generating plants. Dr. Jackson focuses on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba and Alabama rivers, as these four bodies have been central to the aforementioned attributes of Alabama's waterways. In political, geographic and economic consequences, these four rivers constitute the very heart of the evolution of Alabama. Dr. Jackson's narrative is greatly enhanced by his natural ability to present an academic subject in an inviting, readable form. Citing the fact that "too often historians write with other historians in mind", he establishes an instant rapport with the pedestrian reader, without compromising the scholarship of the book, a fact evidenced by the book's numerous annotations. Yet, while the annotations attest to the depth of his research, Dr. Jackson's natural ability as a writer separates this book from that vast yearly output by other, less talented academicians who rely upon footnotes as a crutch upon which recitation rests as a surrogate for originality. As this reviewer consistently states, Alabama history is best studied by subject. A concentrated study of Alabama's major rivers has been sorely missing, and Dr. Jackson's "Rivers Of History" solidly fills that void. This reviewer highly recommends the book and hopes to see more offerings from Dr. Harvey Jackson.

Dr. Jackson has put together a great all-around volume on four of the major rivers in Alabama. The Alabma River system played a major role in the settlement and development of the territory and the state. This is a highly readable volume that should be in the library of those interested in Alabama history and culture. Perhaps the best volume on Alabama that I have read.

In "Rodeo Man: Colorado Leather Meets Alabama Lace," Jennifer Sinclair offers an ideal example of a thoughtful regional tale that is full of local color, respectful of her people, and free of condescension. EXCELLENT WRITING from a very talented novelist.

I read her first novel "Fiery Dunes" last year while at the Coast and enjoyed it so much I had to get "Rodeo Man", her newest book. It's GREAT!!!! Her characters come to life and the storyline keeps you going until you HAVE TO finish the book. Miss Sinclair is a fantastic writer and I'm looking forward to her next novel which I hope will be soon.

The drama, setting, characterization and story rate A++++. I loved this book and recommend it to all. Combining two cultures into an amazing story was believable and quite touching. The emotional pull of his novel is well done and I'm looking forward to Jennifer Sinclair's next novel.

....Jenni is an excellent writer, and this book is her best effort yet. In my personal opinion, its just a matter of when one of the major New York romance publishers sign her - it would be the best decision they could ever possibly make.