Alabama Books

I have mixed emotions about this book, it is very informative on many levels but falls short on many more. I was thinking that it would be about things frequently seen from the beach but it includes a lot of info the layman will probably never need. This includes info (I personally appreciated) about planktonic animals, mieofauna and epifauna, in general a bunch of small animals most people will never notice. Not to say that they shouldn't have been included! They are very important to understanding the ecology of the areas discussed. See what I mean about mixed emotions? I like the way that the book grouped things by community; oyster reef, seagrass bed, mud bottom, etc. A hearty appendix that linked things by taxonomic group would have been nice though. Illustrations where copious but a tad bit simple. In the price range the line drawings could have been better, or supplemented by black and white illustrations. Also curious was the listing of only invertebrates until the end, then the authors jumped over everything and threw in a chapter on sea turtles??? What about the rest of the marine vertebrates? Why include the turtles without the fish and marine mammals? Kind of lopsided.

If you see this book lying around it is certainly worth having. I'm still using it to flip back and explore certain areas. I wouldn't get to hung up on finding a copy, unless you're really trying to own everything on gulf coast marine life.

This book is a quick read. It was written by a lady so a lot of time was spent discussing how they made clothing. It did provide insight as to how a family and community work together to survive difficult times. It is well worth reading.

A rarity among Civil War literature, this study is told from the perspective of Unionist partisans/soldiers and blockaders along the Florida Gulf Coast. The ACW book market is saturated with volumes analyzing or celebrating Southern raiders, partisans, and guerrillas primarily in the Trans-Mississippi, but this is one of the few analyzing partisan activity in Confederate held territory and from the Unionist's perspective no less.

Author George Buker reveals a true civil war being conducted at the local level on Florida's Gulf Coast. The seeds were planted during the secession crisis with bullying and attacks on Unionists by "regulators." As the blockade began there were the loss of trade in the coastal regions and the efforts of the state government to remove population inland. Then came impressments and tax-in-kind, and finally aggressive conscription and removal of exemptions for saltmakers and cattle herders. These events led to widespread disaffection with the Confederate authorities and even open resistance.

This work transitions from the wartime events and civilian interaction with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron that led to the formation of the 2nd Florida Cavalry (U.S.). It then follows the actions of this Union regiment in Florida. The final chapter contrasts the successful Unionist/navy interactions on the Florida Gulf Coast with the relative lack of success on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

Coastal Florida had a refugee crisis as the war progressed. Escaped slaves ("contrabands") sought out the blockaders. Some joined the U.S. Navy. White men and their families sought to avoid conscription or vengeful neighbors/regulators and eventually sought refuge with the blockaders.

By mid-war armed bands of disaffected men were actively resisting conscription efforts in the region. They received support and cover from the blockading squadron. In addition they cooperated with blockaders in expeditions to capture small sailing vessels and destroy saltworks. Interestingly (and probably best for all involved), they delivered their prisoners to the blockaders. Buker examines the rolls of several of the "deserter bands" and finds that only 30% were actually deserters, ~10% were men who had been discharged or resigned. Others were refugees or Unionists.

Finally, an effort was made to enroll these men and others into the U.S. Army. 793 eventually joined the 2nd Florida Cavalry (U.S.). They provided protection on the mainland for refugee communities and participated in raids into the interior. They had the important task of interdicting cattle headed north to supply the CSA armies.

The author explains Florida's key support functions for the Confederacy as a source of salt, beef, and small-scale blockade running. The blockade running in Florida was mostly limited to small sailing vessels working from many rivers, not the steam blockade runners of the major CSA ports). In explaining these and presenting some statistics Buker fills an information gap in Wise's "Lifeline of the Confederacy."

This book contains the necessary elements of a good study. It relies on many first hand accounts, correspondence, and ships logs. It has several well-presented maps with good detail. Muster rolls of some of the partisan bands are provided. The book has good endnotes, bibliography and index. However, it does not contain photographs and sketches.

For some reason, no mention is made of the 1st Florida Cavalry (U.S.) organizing in Pensacola. This unit participated in the Marianna raid (see Dale Cox's "The Battle of Marianna, Florida."

The one serious concern I have is that the author seems overly sympathetic to the Unionist/anti-Confederate elements. Some of the stories seem to be rather one-sided and there is perhaps inadequate consideration of the other perspective. However, the tone is not strident, good vs. evil, or hero/villain in nature.

I highly recommend this work. It is a real eye-opener written from a Unionist perspective.

Precious insights and observations by an articulate diarist add much to the understanding of the common man's war.

The subject of this monograph is the off-neglected contest between the United States and Spain over their borderlands in Florida and the Old Southwest. Rafe Blaufarb does a commendable job elucidating the confusing, and sometimes counterintuitive, diplomatic intrigues that swirled around this time and place.

After a brief historiography of his subject, Blaufarb presents a series of biographical sketches that treat important French exiles in America. Many of these are fascinating, although, because of their numbers, the individuals are virtually impossible to sort out. The title "Bonapartists in the Borderlands" here proves ironic because Blaufarb correctly argues that the Vine and Olive colony, a short-lived French settlement in western Alabama, was predominately composed of refugees from Saint-Domingue (Haiti) rather than from political opponents of the Bourbon regime in Paris.

The second chapter treats the attempt to gain congressional approval for the unorthodox land grant to the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive and the strategic reasons why Congress approved the venture. Next follows an overview of adventurism and madcap plotting by former Napoleonic soldiers in the New World, leading to a detailed description of the Champ d'Asile ("Field of Asylum"), one of the era's notable filibustering fiascos. The final two chapters return to the Vine and Olive colony and conclude with the disparate ends that befell the grantees after its collapse.

The stories told here were unfamiliar to me, and I found this book well worth perusing. Blaufarb has done an excellent job with his complex research, carried on in twenty repositories in five countries, and he also writes better than most academics. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that many readers will take this book whole. Especially in the prosopography sections, I often wished that less could have been more.

Twelve Framable prints. Dauphin Isl, Oak Moutain SP, Cheaha Wilterness (Talladega NF), Little River Rapids (DeSoto SP), Little River Canyon National Preserve (2), Cheaha SP, Natural Bridge (Bankhead NF), Cherokee Rock Village (Lookout Mtn), Lake Purdy.

CLASS REUNION by Irma Jenkins and John Ojo Brown contains two stories about black students attending college in 1948 and 1968. Dear Honeybunches is the story of Leigh Price, a New York girl who was sent to the South to attend an all black college in 1948. It appears that college students are the same down through the ages, from the wild parties, to the drinking, the anguish of dating and finding true love. For those who think that the 'good ol' days' were filled with the righteous, they should read Leigh Price's story, by Irma Jenkins of love, parties and sex in the middle part of the last century.

In the story written by John Ojo Brown, the son of a poor cotton farmer is one of the first black students to integrate a previously all-white university in 1964 in Alabama. John attends the university on a scholarship granted to the two highest achievers of each high school in Alabama. There, he meets and falls in love with Leanette Harris, another new black student. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and he finds that he isn't the only one who thinks so. Every male on campus is literally drooling over Leanette. Who is the lucky man Leanette will choose?

These two coming-of-age stories are fast paced and interesting. We find out so much about the past and what it was like during Jim Crow and the period immediately following the abolition of the 'separate but equal' period in United States history. There were those who meekly accepted Jim Crow and those who rebelled and fought with everything they had to end the bigotry that kept blacks separated in their own country.

CLASS REUNION is a well-written book. It is a realistic view of the United States in the middle of the twentieth century from the eyes of the young. You will find yourself pulling for the two college students as they go through the anguish of unrequited love, the humiliation of the segregated car on the railroad trains and the terrors brought about by the rampaging white supremacists that attempted to stop the integration of the college. I recommend this book without reservation.

Reviewed by alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

If you're not a political insider, but you're willing to patiently study the intricacies of legal challenges to election results, you'll be amazed at what Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Perry Hooper's opponents tried to do to circumvent election laws to defeat him. It's unfortunate that these sorts of cases--which usually involve absentee ballot irregularities, vote total discrepancies, challenged ballots, etc., as well as complex statutory requirements--are so complex that you could never really figure out what's going on from reading newspaper coverage of them. It really takes a book like Johnson's to bring it all out in the open.

[Full disclosure--I've known Johnson for about two years and count him as a friend, though we've never worked together or lived in the same city.]

The book focuses on Chief Justice Hooper's race in 1994 (Johnson was intimately involved with Hooper's campaign), but it's also a great (and realistic, I'm afraid) picture of political strife and election fighting in Alabama. And unfortunately, Hooper's race is hardly the only example of this sort of thing. What's most disturbing about this sort of episode is that, by calling into question the integrity of our elections, it automatically undermines the legitimacy of everything our governments do. It's disturbing that there are so many people willing to jeopardize this legitimacy for the sake of one candidate or party victory (or, in many cases, one's own job). But, as Johnson recognizes, given human nature, it's really not surprising.

Johnson pulls no punches in this book. In fact, as an Alabama resident, part of me doesn't want anyone to read this book because it reflects so poorly on politics in our state. (As if Alabama needs more bad publicity in that area.) On the other hand, truth and the rule of law triumphed in the end in this case, and there's no story worth telling more than that.

The book does suffer from typographical and other editing errors (e.g., forced transitions between passages and structural difficulties in some chapters) that are more frequent than one usually sees in books of this nature. However, they're all of an editing/printing nature, and not errors in grammar or fact. Perhaps they resulted from a rush to get the work into print. Overall, though, Johnson's story (and his honest telling of it) is so compelling that the editing and printing problems shouldn't prevent most readers from being fascinated with the book. In any case, I'd have no trouble giving five stars to a more closely edited second edition.

The book describes life in frontier Alabama (as a Westerner, I always find the notion of "frontier" Alabama as strange...), generally from a 12-year old's viewpoint. The historical atmosphere is excellent, and the portrayal of historical events is accurate and realistic. The writing is not Pulitzer-Prize level, but it is more than adequate. There is some rough realism here (mentions of scalping, babies being killed, etc.) but no excessive descriptions of flowing blood.

I found this book to be loads of fun for the casual Alabama Football fan and the not so casual fan. I was reading the book with a group of friends and we talked about the ins and outs of each play and discussed the worth of each play that was included. The CD that was included was well done and brought back some cherrished memories.