Georgia Books

Dr. Carolyn Earle Billingsley has made a major breakthrough in American, especially Southern, historiography. She has elevated genealogy into the first rank of scholarly tools for understanding society and what springs from it. In the process she has overturned former conclusions as to how the Southern frontier was settled and developed. The core element is communities of kinship.

They have been right under our noses all along. Although writers have noted the importance of kinships episodically, they have explored them indifferently. It is common practice for biographers to devote a few pages to family background but little more. One extraordinary exception was Robert A. Caro who described President Johnson's families and environment in the Texas Hill Country in vivid detail. You could almost see little Lyndon as an incipient statesman. A friend wisely observed, though, that we do not know what cultural baggage those families brought to those hills and where they got it.

Dr. Billingsley's process opens up vast possibilities for research among families and persons for whom manuscript and printed documentation is skimpy or virtually non-existent, which is to say, most of them. As a longtime manuscript librarian I know how spotty the records are. Many a worthy in his or her time is now unknown when the opposite was the case in their own time and place.

Dr. Billingsley has not only theorized about the process but also demonstrated it in a study of a migrating, changing community of kinship, one without much documentation beyond genealogy. She has shown us how to do it. She has identified the core element of Southern society that defined its culture, politics, economics, and religion. As she noted, church history is incomplete if you are unaware of the familial interconnections of the clergy among themselves and communities of kinship.

Reading this book, I felt like I was reading about my own community of kinship, a most useful term, from Virginia and, especially South Carolina, to Alabama and westward. Our complex was quite larger and more concentrated in one region. In our principal county, the metropolis of Birmingham rose among us. Large numbers of us stayed and, having developed a rural society from scratch, participated in making a city.

Perhaps her Earles connect to our Earles in South Carolina and Alabama, two galaxies touching at the edges. One of our prominent relatives was a neighbor of her kinship community in Bibb County, Alabama. Cases in point!

Dr. Bond has created a new genre within the discipline of African American Religous studies. Any serious scholar should include this title in their library.

This is not a review. This is for your information. Confederate City: Augusta, georgia is not out of print. It was reprinted and by the Richmond County Historical Society in 1996 and is for sale through our office in Augusta, Georgia. We can be reached via e-mail at vgreene@asu.edu or at (706)737-1532 weekdays. The cost of the book is $35.00 plus $2.00 for shipping. Thank you.

This is a very interesting primary source for people curious about the role New York City played in the Civil War. With interest in the rich military history of Governors Island on the rise, the fact that Edward Drummond was imprisoned in Castle Williams should hopefully draw readers to this book. The book is a testimony to the fact that POWs were treated in a reasonably humane manner early in the war when exchanges were still possible. The editor examines some of the theories about the crass attitude of the higher-ups which led to the development of what eventually amounted to death camps like Andersonville. The book also captures the brother vs. brother nature of the Civil War that accounts for much of the sentimental attachment to its study. The editor, curator of the Military History Institute at Carlisle, PA, knows how to tie primary sources together. This book is an example of why it's so important to preserve journals and correspondence that have historical value. It's to the credit of southerners that they have a tradition of this kind of preservation.

The "Black Atlantic" referred to in the subtitle is Paul Gilroy's "pathbreaking book...engaging with philosophical, sociological, historical, political, as well as literary issues." The author Gruesser himself takes this approach to the interrelationships--the confluences--among postcolonial writings, African American literary works, and influences and literature in Africa and the Caribbean and their presence in other, mostly white, cultures. The term "black Atlantic" was used originally in the field of black art. Gruesser notes especially Gilroy's interest in "routes" more so than "roots." Gruesser--professor of English at New Jersey's Kean University--develops a panoramic comprehension of the different literary areas; which are typically studied in the light of different theories. But this author is interested in the experiences, sensibilities, and cultural and historical grounds drawing the different literature together. Writings by Salman Rushdie, Naipaul, Walter Mosley, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker are among those assayed. Gruesser explores the bonds among this diverse group.

Myers--assistant professor of English at Manhattan College--explores the roots of his belief that "racial oppression and environmental destruction [are] inherently and historically related" by critiques of the founding views toward nature in American society--Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia" and Thoreau's "Walden." With his deconstructive treatment of these, Myers discloses that these two influential authors set up a bifurcated scheme leaving nature and individuals apart from one another, with individuals having mastery over nature. This "bifurcation" based on Thoreau's ideas of social reform and environmentalism in his writings "reproduces the human/nature duality at the root of ecological and racial hegemony." Thoreau came to feel uneasy about this bifurcation; but he never explicitly renounced it or went beyond it even implicitly in his writings. To find expressions of the harmony, rather than the duality, between the human and nature inextricably bound in with real equality, Myers turns to works by Native Americans, but also by African Americans and some American authors of European heritage. African Americans essentially and intuitively have this harmony with nature from their origins in Africa and also their work on the land as slaves in America. He points to the 1988 nonfiction book "Mississippi Solo" by the African-American writer Eddy L. Harris--"an account of his solo canoe trip down the length of the Mississippi River"--as containing the "ecocentricity that respects the intrinsic value of the larger world and from which springs a consciousness of human equality and an imperative for social justice." Myers does not attempt an exhaustive study of his subject, but rather presents a relatively abbreviated, though well-developed study of it; and along with this, persuasive analysis and reasoning in support of his point of view.

Being Southern, I enjoy reading stories and accounts of the Southern experience ... especially as it relates to food. Cornbread Nation Vol. IV (with an emphasis on Louisiana foods) is a delightful compilation of food stories from and about the South. I recommend it to non-Southerners as well so they can come to know us beyond the stereotypical "hillbilly" image.

This is an easy to read, well laid out book that is very straightforward and practical. It covers most of the crucial areas of corporate governance in 90 pages. I'm using this book for my undergraduate course on Corporate Governance course. The best part of the books is a number of examples from the corporate world that make the reading very interesting. Though I use other book as references, this book gives me the starting point on a topic.Thanks to the authors for their good work.

I strongly recommend this book anyone who is interested in corporate governance.

Students of Civil War history well know Sarah Morgan who wrote a diary that remains an unparalleled portrait of her time. The daughter of privilege, Sarah was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and began her diary in her late teens. By the time Union soldiers had taken over Baton Rouge she had lost both her father and brother. Sarah, along with her sister, Miriam, and her mother eventually fled to the outskirts and later to New Orleans where they remained until the war's closing days.

At one time she wrote, "Oh, how I hate to be like other women." She most certainly was not. She wrote in clear precise prose with an unflinching eye for the reasons behind battle and the horrors of war. Sarah would become the first woman to have a byline when she wrote for the Charleston News and Courier, covering such subjects as race relations, funerals, Spanish and French politics. These editorials by, of all people, a woman caused considerable comment in Charleston.

Her original diary was first published in 1913, almost immediately becoming a source for historians and students alike.

Now, with this volume from The University of Georgia Press we are fortunate to find not only the letters exchanged between Sarah and her husband, Francis Warrington Dawson but these missives are accompanied by articles Sarah wrote. Thus, we now have a complete picture of Sarah the woman as found in her original diary tracing the years of the War and then tin his volume encompassing her years following the war.

When the couple first met Dawson was a widower and owner of the Charleston News and Courier. Sarah was reluctant to marry, and the notes exchanged reveal much about each of them as their courtship continued. Of special interest are Sarah's views on the state of women at that time.

This well conceived and executed volume sheds much light on an important part of our country's history.

- Gail Cooke

The book arrived within two weeks of my ordering it and was in the condition advertised.