Alabama Books

While this "book" served its intended purpose (a fun birthday present to friends that live in Northern Alabama), it was a little disappointing to recieve in the mail a stack of photocopied newspaper articles and typewriter-written notes held together with a binder comb when what I was expecting was an actual book.

Author Evelio Buitrago Salazar is a Sergeant in the Colombina army. This book is his diary of the key role he played in searching and destroying enemies of the Colombian people from 1960 to 1965. Sergeant Buitrago is a braggart, self-righteous and takes pleasure in killing bandoleros(bandits). He is also a poor and biased writer.

Nevertheless, this book is an excellent account of the bloody, brutal and barbaric period in Colombian history called, "La Violencia." Moreover, Buitrago is honored with the prestigious Cross of Boyaca by the Colombian government for his bravery and eventually he is promoted to the highest rank possible for an enlisted man. So although he exaggerates on just about every page of his book Buitrago does risk his own life often and in doing so offers a first hand look of how much unarmed civilians suffered during this terrible period in Colombian history.

This book is not for the weak of heart. Buitrago is a calloused military veteran who describes death, rape, torture and massacres as if it is as common as having a cup of coffee in the morning.

Russell W. Ramsey writes an outstanding introduction of the text. He objectively and succintly explains Colombia's legacy of violence. In addition, the translation of this University of Alabama Press book by M. Murray Lasley is first class.

I had originally placed this order almost a year ago with much anticipation. After the publishing was delayed for months I had forgotten I even had it on back order. Well, I finally got my copy and I must say that it is a big disappointment.

To begin with, there are exactly two illustrations: one map and one seriously degraded photo of Col Oates. Unless you have the memory of an elephant it is very hard to get detail on timelines and troop movements/placements on text alone. This, to me, was perhaps the biggest disappointment.

Another area of concern is the, at times, seemingly lack of real research. One example of this is the claim made by the author that the hill, thus the entire battle, could have been won if the 15th ALA had had support, etc. He failed to explain where these units were supposed to come from, neglected to mention that by the time the 15th ALA had run out of steam there wasn't enough daylight left to mount another assault, any supports would have to come from over a mile away under fire, and he doesn't offer any gameplan as to how the Confederates were supposed to hold the hill once it was taken (given the fact that there were 1000s of Union troops within double quick distance). I don't mean to nitpick on one aspect but the entire book is written this way.

I was looking for a book that was going to finally explain the Confederate point of view in detail, with battle maps to accompany the text. But this reads more like a guy who is trying to defend his family's honor after someone hurled a staining insult at them. I agree that the Conf side of this legendary struggle has not been represented in enough detail and scope. I still feel that way.

Bottom line-the premise is a great idea; don't waste your money.

That a book purporting to be a detailed, comprehensive tactical study offers only one map pretty well reflects the carelessness, and lack of respect for the reader, with which this book apparently was produced. I've written thirteen books on the Civil War and Indian Wars myself, and I understand the importance of good maps. The prose also is sloppy, and the author repeats the same absurd premise - that a few more men in the ranks of one regiment might have changed the course of Gettysburg, and thus of the Civil War - so many times that one feels tempted to toss the book across the room. An absolute disgrace to the field of military history.

The author, who did a good job with Burnside's Bridge, repeats himself over and over ad naseoum and fails to include maps or drawings to illustrate what he is describing. His main premise is, that had the 15 th Alabama been fully complemented with men and had it been supported by another regiment, Gettysburg would have been a Confederate victory. That is prepostorous, considering the number of reinforcements the Union had. Oates and his men deserve a lot of credit for their valor but so do the Union troops who put up one hell of a battle from prepared defensive positions. The author is capable of writing a much better product and must have been in a hurry to churn another book out.

I totally agree with [a negative reviewer]. I was very disappionted after waiting so long for the release. The authur constantly repeated things, trying to make the book longer. Plus Tucker seems to have a grudge against Joshua Chamberlain. In the last chapter he makes it sound like Chamberlain had nothing to do with the battle and lied about his contribution afterwards. He provdes no maps to prove his "research". He also states the 15th Alabama retired up Big Round Top after the battle. But wasn't Big Round Top in Union hands after the 2nd day? There's many things I didn't like about this book.

Being a USC alum and naturally a huge fan of USC football, I was very excited when I saw this title available in the local bookstore. Had I read the reviews already posted here I would have saved my money. To say I am hugely disappointed by this book would be an understatement like saying Reggie Bush is kinda fast.

The premise of this book is the 1970 game between USC and Alabama, two teams who were powerhouses at the time, but were studies in contrast. USC was in Los Angeles, California, home to sun, surf, movie stars, and a football team composed of an eclectic collection of surfer-dude types, black athletes, Greek rich kids, and the like. They were a thoroughly integrated team which had already produced two black Heisman Trophy winners in Mike Garrett and O.J. Simpson, and had won national championships with those integrated teams.

Alabama, meanwhile, was still a bastion of segregation, the varsity football team in 1970 was still all-white, but they were a competitive power due to the coaching acumen of the legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. The game between the two schools was meant to show the segregationist Alabama boosters that if they wanted to continue having a powerful football team, then integration was the way to go.

Sounds like a great premise for a football book, right? Well - it is, except that the author instead goes on long treatises about slavery, the role of Christianity in shaping modern America, the rightness of Republican ideals, the Civil Rights struggle, and any and all topics EXCEPT seemingly - the game itself! There are numerous interviews with people who were associated with both programs at the time, but they're not paced and edited in such a way that they drive the story forward. Instead, they seem like meandering sidebars at best, and page-long non sequiturs at worst. I'm about 3/4ths done with this book, and finding it a slogging read - it's about as much fun as a biology textbook.

I do not recommend this book. It is not an easy, uplifting, or even particularly informative read. It instead seems to beat you over the head with Christianity and how wonderful and instrumental it was in bringing the races together and helping to integrate that most segregated of teams, the Alabama Crimson Tide, but much of the book even contradicts that notion, given that many of the interviewees in the book basically mentioned that "the time was right" and indeed, Bama had already brought in a few black players by that time, and Christianity had little, if anything to do with it.

Save your money and just watch the youtube clip about the game, as I'm sure you'll find it much more concise, accurate, and to the point than this entire book.

This book is absolutely terrible. There are no redeeming qualities about Mr. Travers' attempt to chronicle the social change surrounding the 1970 meeting between USC and Alabama in Birmingham.

First, he has managed to turn a book about the social ramifications of a football game into his own personal crusade for Christianity, the Republican Party, and Platonic Ideals.

The Platonic stuff seems thrown in to make Mr. Travers seem more intelligent than he actually is and he forgets that National Socialism used Plato as a basis for its ideology. Since he puts so much of this into the mouth of one of his personal favorites, John Papadakis, who was clearly cooperative in gathering information about SC in 1970, it seems that he is also suffering from hero worship. The portrayal of Papadakis as the "saintly go-between" for blacks and whites on the team is disputed in this very book by Trojan legend Anthony Davis.

His conclusion that conservatives, and Republicans in particular, were the party of racial equality, albeit on their own slow time line, and Democrats are the party of repression of minorities is not only historically inaccurate, but reeks of a revisionism that has permeated the Republican party as it courts minorities. He also mentions the greatness of Newt Gingrich but attacks President Clinton for his "immorality".

Mr. Travers also revises the massacre of Native Americans by the United States as "an inevitable clash of civilizations". But he has no problem declaring that every colonizing country prior to the US was barbarous in the manner in which they murdered, raped, spread disease amongst and stole from native people across the globe. He uses the ever-ethical argument that slavery is somewhat justified because "blacks in America are so much better off than blacks in Africa" defense. So that he doesn't seem like the total racist that he clearly is, Mr. Travers interjects constant reminders that "slavery was wrong".

Mr. Travers claims that Bear Bryant was absolutely not a racist, he didn't integrate his program because of the administration and alumni base. But he tells us that Bear could have been the governor of Alabama he was so popular there. He "walked on water" for these folks, but couldn't have said that he wanted to recruit some African-American players? If he made a fuss about it, wouldn't it have been the university administration that would have been attacked rather than the demi-god Coach Bryant?

Lastly, Mr. Travers has no compunction about comparing these men on a football field to soldiers on a battlefield. When Kellen Winslow does it, he is roundly criticized, a fact Mr. Travers must have been aware of, but when another personal favorite of his, Marv Goux, longtime USC assistant coach does it, it is a great metaphor for a game. To add insult to injury, Mr. Travers wrote this as the Iraq War is still on going and real soldiers are giving their lives for their country. But it is the liberals who are ruining this country by trying to bring them home. Maybe Mr. Travers thinks that the conditions in Iraq are no worse than a spirited football practice or hard-fought contest. That would explain his hatred of Vietnam War protesters and those who oppose the Iraq War.

As a fellow USC alumnus I think Mr. Travers has taken the USC fight song, "Fight On" too literally.

On September 12, 1970 a powerful integrated USC Football Team came to Alabama to play a segregated University Of Alabama Football Team in a game that would be considered a landmark to many in future generations. USC led by two black, future NFL players Sam Cunningham and Clarence Davis, stunned Alabama with a crushing defeat on it's home field. One of legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant's assistants said, "Bam' Cunningham did more for integration in an hour than has been done in the last one hundred years." Holy cow!

Since I was a loyal USC Football fan growing up in Los Angeles during that time, when I heard about this book, I was excited and looking forward to its release. I'm sad to say that as a football fan I was disappointed when I read it. This book reads more like an ancient world history text book, with much less actual football action than I anticipated. The author not only quotes Socrates and Plato, but discussed Thucydides and the "HISTORY OF PELOPONNESIAN WAR", detailing Athens's losing battle with Sparta from 431 to 404 BC. Rome's loss to the Barbarians, the Spanish Inquisition, books by Fareed Zakaria intertwining Western civilization embodied by the Christian Church, the Greeks, the Roman Senate, the Magna Carta, and Oliver Cromwell's England... and on.. and on.
The periodic interview/statements by sportswriter's, players, etc at the end of chapters, while well intentioned, seemed to ramble and meander away from the main points.

If you're looking for a hard hitting sports oriented book, this may not be the book for you.

Noted Zelda Fitzgerald biographer Kendall Taylor has just completed the non fiction account of the love affair between Zelda and Edouard Jozan with the cooperation of his family and many heretofore unpublished photos. Watch for it.

Thanks to the wonderful reception Alabama Song has received there is great interest in the forthcoming non fiction story of the affair between Zelda Fitzgerald and Edouard Jozan.

Kendall Taylor's new book Perilous Interlude (working title) concerning the affair of Zelda Fitzgerald and Edouard Jozan promises to be an important and fascinating addition to literary biography. Her approach is to examine the story of Zelda Fitzgerald's relationship with Jozan and the impact it had on Scott Fitzgerald's and Zelda's writing, the lives of the Fitzgeralds and their marriage. Although it is well known that Zelda was in some way involved with Jozan, and that this episode was important to the Fitzgeralds' relationship, the exact nature of Zelda and Edouard's involvement has never really been settled. Until now there has not been wide agreement about the importance of this involvement to the Fitzgeralds' lives and works. Taylor admits that she did not appreciate the importance of this episode when she wrote Sometimes Madness is Wisdom, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald; A Marriage, her previous well received study of the Fitzgeralds. She has since determined that Jozan was the initial inspiration for the character of Gatsby, and the affair a key element in Fitzgerald's writing of the novel. She is able to compare Jozan to characters in the Fitzgeralds' writing in ways that no previous scholar has been able to do.

Through acquaintance with Jozan's daughter and son, Taylor has unearthed previously unavailable biographical details about Jozan, his life, and his relationship to the Fitzgeralds as well as many previously unpublished photographs. On the basis of this new knowledge, she now believes that Zelda was deeply involved emotionally with Jozan and that this involvement influenced the rest of the Fitzgeralds' life together -- that it poisoned their relationship and instigated the deterioration that led to Zelda's hospitalization for mental illness.

Taylor's discoveries about the centrality of Edouard Jozan to the Fitzgeralds' lives and writing will provide a better understanding of one of America's greatest novelists.

The previous reviewer is certainly correct in saying that Vogel writes badly. Her prose is bombastic and overblown; her assertions of similarity between passages in Dickens and the Bible are wildly overstated, and often involve willful misreading of one or both of the texts she's comparing in order to make her comparisons even sound plausible. Her handling of biblical narratives is particularly inept, although her allegorical anti-"Hebrew" readings of Dickens are no better, as well as theologically repugnant. For books like this you should offer a "0 star" option!

I have read Jane Vogel's Allegory in Dickens, and not only do I disagree with her treatment of the late and great Charles Dickens; her style of writing is extremely bad, for lack of better term. Jane Vogel does not know how to write. She simply never got how to write. Never inherited that gene or learned in her studies. She's a professor at Ithaca College English Department, I know because a friend of mine's son goes to IC. She is know around the campus as the one with a lose screw. Get this woman a psychiatrist, because her writing career is over.

I own a number of books on the Alabama and other Confederate commerce raiders and hoped to learn more about the British shipyards, the arbitration of the Alabama Claims (that Britain had provided the Confederacy with warhips while maintaing the front that she was a neutral non-combatant) and the ship itself.

The book starts out as a history, while the last chapter addresses Martin Luther King, the KKK and other Civil Rights items. How this information connects to the Alabama is spun by the thinnest of threads and much of the text shows an extreme pro-Yankee bias.

Save your money and buy a reprint or used copy of Service Afloat by Raphael Semmes, the captain of the Alabama. There is lot of pro-Confederacy bias, but no other book tells more about the ship. For information on the British shipyards, Bulloch's The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe is still definitive, particularly since the author "bought" the Alabama and conducted financial and oversight activities for the government.

This book is listed as Babette Cole as the author. I ordered the book. The author of this book is Brenda Cole. It is not a Children's book.

This book was interesting because there were some things I didn't know about UA, but only saw one or two chapters on Auburn. Very good info in those few pages, but the book focused on the Bear Bryant legacy, and what he did for Alabama football. Borrow from the library if you must (purchase if you're a tide fan), but better books exist on the rivalry. War Eagle!!!!!!

I found this book while doing research for a paper. Basically it is a poorly written assault on Celine for his anti-semitism. Painful to read and of minimal use for information on the author. Even as a study of an anti-semite it is largely useless...