Alabama Books

This the second novel release for the mother and daughter writing team, Sandra Poole and Jennifer Youngblood. "Stoney Creek, Alabama" is a sleek romantic thriller that stands out from the crowd -- holding you spellbound and tugging at your heartstrings while entertaining you with its witty Southern flavor and metaphors. The writing is solid, the story compelling, and the characters believable. This novel captures and conveys the Southern culture in such a way that it takes you down to Alabama and lets you live among its people. I rarely read a novel more than once, but this one I will!

There are usually two sides to every story. However, as a labor and employment lawyer who represents management, it is difficult for me to see how an investigation into the fact pattern presented by Mr. Martin could have resulted in anything short of an apology and compensation for the egregious conduct of his supervisors and certain co-workers. Of course, when the US Supreme Court opened the door for some clear guidance on same-sex sexual harassment, the victory for Mr. Martin was all but assured. Nonetheless, the book's riveting account of Mr. Martin's courage to stand up to the system, prior to the precedent impact of the Supreme Court's decision, is a reminder to us all that right is right and wrong is simply wrong!

I would encourage corporate America to read and digest the issues which Mr. Martin raises, not only in the isolated same-sex harassment arena, but for an education into the mindset of a tenacious plaintiff who is willing to risk all for the sake of a belief that he was wronged by a company and organization to which he gave his all, and most of a career. This book, then, is a warning and an education for human resources directors at all companies. Such a story of harm and betrayal at the hands of a man's employer may encourage others similarly situated to fight, but if the proper lessons are learned, Mr. Martin's narrative may do well to prevent such from happening!

Sincerely,

James H. Stock, Jr.
Weintraub, Stock, Bennett, Grisham, And Underwood
2560 One Commerce Square
Memphis, TN 38103

One of the greatest events in the history of the United States began rather quietly on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955 a quiet seamstress named Rosa Parks was on her way home. In the strictly segregated buses of the time, when the bus was full, a black person was forced to give up their seat to a white person. However, on this day, Rosa Parks became an American hero when she refused to do so. In this case, her act of courage and refusal became the tipping point that led to the end of segregation laws.
In protest, local black leaders organized a one-day boycott, which was far more successful than they had thought possible. They managed to keep it going until the managers of the city bus line gave in to nearly all of their demands. It also drew national and international attention and a new black leader named Martin Luther King Junior emerged. His tactic of nonviolence, taken from Mohandas Gandhi of India, proved very effective. When the rest of the country saw blacks being beaten and sprayed with powerful fire hoses, it was sickened and the people were forced to confront and overcome the racial inequalities.
No American school child should graduate from elementary school lacking knowledge of the courage of Rosa Parks and the consequences of the Montgomery bus boycott. This book is an excellent way to satisfy that requirement.

Excellant source of information specific to Alabama divorce law. Saves you costly errors that you can pay for later! I highly recommend this book to anyone contemplating a divorce in Alabama!

Summer Snow is a cornucopia of riches about a landscape steeped in traditions and customs that evoke pride and terror, praisesong and dirges. Harris is funny, provocative, frank, and incisive as she ruminates on family, community, education, racism, religion, hair and the mannerisms that inform the black and white people who intersect on these social and cultural plains. Her essays are steeped in a wisdom that has accrued through a joyful life. The summer snow of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as depicted by Trudier Harris, is a cultural phenomenon that is quintessentially American for any reader growing up in the South--and I use Malcolm X's geographical construct, south of Canada.

As a fellow crew member of the author, I can vouch for the truthfull telling of these stories. Alan Cockrell shares in the telling of his personal experience in the first Gulf War. It gave me immense pleasure recounting the tales of the 172 Airlift Wing and of the "crew dogs" of 183 Airlift Squadron. It was real, It happened, and it will be fondly remembered.

TSGT. MAury "Hardcopy" Lunn (RET.)

Before the Germans killed historical writing by trying to make history a scientific process, there were guys like this one who really brought it alive and make us care. This book is riviting. It has haunted my dreams and sparked my imagination since I read it many months ago. I will never be the same.

This well-written book provides an interesting history of Tallassee, Alabama and its relationship with the Tallapoosa River. From its beginnings as a Creek Indian village to its emergence as a major textile town, Tallassee was a unique place. The photographs, gathered from various sources, constitute an impressive collection, and many date from the 1800's. Maps, programs, and other memorabilia along with numerous family, school, and community photographs, help to create a glimpse of our past. This would be a wonderful book for history buffs and anyone with connections to Tallassee. Tallassee (Images of America: Alabama)

"Hero in war and peace, implacable enemy of sham and duplicity, living symbol of courage and fairness, jurist par excellence. Through tides of emotion surged menacingly about you, you have read the law as it was, not as other might have wished it to be" (Bass, Taming the Storm, pg. 403)

These words inscribed on an honorary degree from Saint Michael's College hung on the wall of Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr.'s chambers and personified the legacy of one of the most significant judges within the last century of American history. In his 1993 book, "Taming the Storm," Dr. Jack Bass goes to great lengths to reveal this modest hero to a generation not necessarily familiar with the judge who stood behind the traditional historic scene in the Civil Rights Movement. Judge Johnson's deeply held beliefs of personal and judicial integrity as well as a strong sense of justice can be seen in his landmark verdicts toward Civil Rights, prison reform, and state mental health care.

I felt a bit like Bill Moyers' crew who had interviewed him in 1980. He said, "The only Johnson they'd ever heard of was Andrew and Lyndon. And to find such impregnable character in such a winsome form was like a discovery of a new hero" (Bass, Taming the Storm, pg 370). The book, more than anything, renews an optimism of finding legitimate Southern heroes - men and women of true integrity.

The story of Judge Johnson, and consequently Dr. Bass's book, are essential not only to scholars but perhaps more importantly to a new generation of Southern men and women. Those who may look back on twentieth century southern history with a certain level of embarrassment can know that a beacon of rationale and justice derived from the south.

If someone had submitted a manuscript based on Ilya Ehrenburg's life to a publisher it would have been tossed away as too unbelievable, even for fiction. Ilya Ehrenburg joined the Bolsheviks as a young man but had broken with the party well before the Russian Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Nikolai Bukharin and spent time with Leon Trotsky in Geneva. While living in Paris before the revolution he was befriended by Lenin but the friendship ended when Ehrenburg mocked him in a satirical piece he had published. He lived abroad for years, both before and after the Revolution, he spoke French and hobnobbed with Europe's literary intelligentsia. He was Jewish. Thousands of people in Stalin's USSR were purged or summarily executed for having just one of these characteristics. Millions were purged for less. Yet Ehrenburg not only survived but prospered. Joshua Rubenstein's "Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg" does an excellent job of setting out the fascinating details of Ehrenburg's life and the many factors that `conspired' to keep Ehrenburg in the public eye and far away from the Gulag.

For those that survived the Holocaust the fact of survival is often an interior matter for the survivor, sometimes marked by remorse and guilt simply because one survived against all odds. For those that survived the purges and executions of the Stalin era in the USSR, the fact of survival is often an exterior matter in which the outside world questions the means by which the survivor escaped unharmed. The historian A.J.P. Taylor, in a review of Ilya Ehrenburg's Memoirs suggest that in "years of danger and crisis, it becomes almost a crime to survive." The fact of Ehrenburg's survival and the means by which he managed to survive is the central theme of Rubenstein's biography.

Rubenstein takes the reader through Ehrenburg's early years as a student revolutionary and his flirtation with the Bolsheviks. The description of Ehrenburg's pre-revolutionary time in Paris and his initial contacts with Lenin and his cadres in exile is particularly interesting. After the revolution, a revolution that Ehrenburg condemned, we see him changing his mind and becoming a staunch supporter of the regime after the Bolsheviks defeated the white army in the Civil War. From there Ehrenburg's years in Paris the 1920s and 1930s where he became well known in artistic and literary circles are outlined very nicely. Ehrenburg became the de facto ambassador of art and literature of the USSR. In fact, it may very well have been Ehrenburg's rather exalted status in the west that protected him all those years. From there we see Ehrenburg's increasing involvement in the anti-fascist movement culminating in his extensive reporting from Spain during the civil war. Ehrenburg survived and prospered despite the fact that Stalin's purges often focused on people who had spent time abroad and who participated in the Civil War. When WWII started Ehrenburg's fame increased as a result of his forceful and intelligent reporting for Red Star, the Red Army newspaper. It was during the war that Ehrenburg, along with his colleague Vasily Grossman, began the compilation that became known as the Black Book of Soviet Jewry. The monumental Black Book may very well represent the most important work of Ehrenburg's life.

From the time the war ended and through his death in 1953, Stalin's anti-cosmopolitan campaign and his doctor's plot caused thousands of Jews, including many friends of Ehrenburg to be purged and sent to the Gulag. Through it all, Ehrenburg continued to be published, not without some difficulty in the Soviet Union. At the same time, Ehrenburg became one of the Soviet regime's greatest apologists. As he had done in the 1930's Ehrenburg attacked western left-leaning intellectuals that deviated from the party line. Throughout Stalin's rein and through Khrushchev's leadership Ehrenburg became perhaps the best known and most-intellectually well thought of defender of the Soviet regime. It is for these actions that many find fault with Ehrenburg.

However, at the same time, and within the constraints of an oppressive regime where any untoward step could have severe repercussions, Rubenstein sets out those many instances where Ehrenburg went out of his way to help friends and fellow artists who had been arrested or could not get published. Rubenstein takes pains to point out how many of those who had been imprisoned respected and were grateful for Ehrenburg's efforts on their behalf.

It is the portrayal of this conflict between Ehrenburg's arguably craven kow-towing to the Soviet regime and his efforts on behalf of his friends or fellow writers that make Rubenstein's work so interesting. Rubenstein, and others, fall squarely on the side of absolving Ehrenburg of most of the responsibility for his acts. Nevertheless he does not bludgeon the reader over the head with that opinion nor does he withhold information that might lead a reader to come to a different conclusion.

I tend to fall a bit onto the non-judgmental side of the ledger although not perhaps as fully as Rubenstein. The deciding factor for me is the thought that Ehrenburg's severest critics seem to be those in the west who did not have to walk the deadly tightrope Ehrenburg walked for years. Those that seem most accepting of Ehrenburg's behavior were those who lived and suffered during those years and appreciated Ehrenburg's efforts on their behalf.

Rubenstein's Tangled Loyalties is a fascinating look at the life of someone who spent a life making hard choices. I recommend this to anyone interested in Soviet history and leave it up to the reader to determine whether Ehrenburg was guilty of the crime of survival.

L. Fleisig