Louisiana Books

Donald Reynolds shines a long-deserved spotlight on what may have been an incendiary set of events to start the Civil War, a series of events neglected even by Texas regional historians.

By midsummer 1860, Southern "fire-eaters" such as R.B. Rhett and W.L. Yancey despaired of getting more mileage out of John Brown.

Then, in the midst of a scorching, bone-dry Texas summer with the thermometer hitting 110 at times, a series of fires in the Dallas area provided new spark for secessionists.

The fires all were mid-afternoon, an unlikely time for arson. In fact, Reynolds shows that writers of the time warned about "Lucifers," the new phosphorus-compounded matches, having a tendency to spontaneously combust in hot weather.

But, secessionists in Texas soon saw an opportunity, and ran with it. A number of blacks in the state were hung; so, too were some northern whites, including a minister from the northern Methodist Church. (Methodism's main body in the U.S. split in 1844, in part over the slavery issue.)

The Texas "arsons" were cited by Rhett, Yancey, Edmund Ruffin and others as the advance guard of "Black Republicanism," despite that party's disavowal of abolitionism.

Would the Civil War still have happened if Lincoln were elected, but without the Texas branch of fire-eaters spreading the "arson" myth? Well, Reynolds throws a little counterfactual history in his epilogue, with a couple of different scenarios.

If you're a Civil War buff, you'll want to look at this book.

A welcome addition to CW sources. Weaver does an excellent job filling in the background and the epilogue. The actual diary takes up less than half the pages, but they are intriguing nonetheless. Daniels is a true hero toiling in the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast against the prejudice of other Union officers and soldiers. He can be inspiring at times.

That Which is Hidden has not only been inspirational but also informative. This book not only helps one to understand the struggles faced from others, but most imporatantly the internally struggles which keeps us from reaching our full potenial in Christ. God wants to see his people happy and prosperous. Satan does not. That Which is Hidden explains so well how Satan tries to attack our families, jobs, homes, relationships and finances. Once you start reading this book, you will not want to put it down. Hope there's a part II.

I was enchanted by these poems. I also enjoyed reading the comments of others about them which appear on the dust jacket: "A body of work full of distinctiveness and sustained vigor." --Richard Wilbur; "A poet confident of his craft's resources and his heart's determined fidelity to what it knows and loves."--Robert Creeley; "How timely this splendid showing of Sandy's invaluable work! Now, after praise here by Merrill, there by Clampitt, this poet of intelligent wonder can be savored in full, as we say, by further readers ready to disciver such dark winnings, such luminous wounds."--Richard Howard Then I saw in Publishers Weekly a great review including the comment, "Sandy writes sometimes dense, sometimes narrative poems that are colloquial yet steeped in a love of attaining the grander sweep of poetic utterance." I agree with all of these observations!

This biography about the life of lesser-known Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, reveals details about the Harlem Renaissance that helps to link people, places and events together. Mrs. Spencer's gardenhome was an important nexus between the North and the South for many of the Black intelligentsia during that time. Her biography shares her friendships with James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. DuBois and others; giving us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of these great figures of African American history.

We also receive the gift of learning about Mrs. Spencer's literary contribution to the Harlem Renaissance, with a healthy collection of her poems placed in an appendix in the back of the book. "Time's Unfading Garden" would be a wonderful addition to any Harlem Renaissance collection. It is a rare item today, but if you can find it, it is worth the investment.

After reading Gerard Patterson's 'Debris of Battle' and Robert E. Denney's 'Civil War Medicine', I was left yearning for more information on the role of Catholic Sisters in nursing during the Civil War. Sister Mary Denis has done an outstanding research job, not just with the history of their nursing, as well as otherlay female nursing during the Civil War, but also with popular opinion of Catholics and nuns, and why the Sisters were so uniquely positioned to be of such value. A welcome book on a subject too long ignored.

I grew up in Evangeline Parish, the city of Ville Platte, Louisiana. My family goes back at least 4 generations of living in this area also. They all spoke Cajun French as a primary language. If fact, when my maternal grandmother was in the first grade, she was punished for speaking French in the classroom rather then English. So, you can see that I grew up in an environment rich with the French language and Cajun culture.

As I read this book, I was amazed as to how many of these phrases I knew and some I knew in French but had never heard the English translation. There are also many phrases which I did not know. I believe this shows the thorough search Ms. LaFlear has conducted.

I would recommend this book to those who know French, as well as those who do not and wish to gain insight in to the Cajun culture.

...Many of the forty-nine poems collected here document the history of Morgan's native southern Appalachians. The book's initial sequence traces the region's history from contact between the Cherokees and the British to the mid-twentieth century. In poems such as "Wild Peavines" and "Girdling," Morgan writes of the landscape changes that came with white settlement; in such poems as "Thrush Doctor" and "Fever Wit," he writes of old-time customs virtually eliminated by twentieth-century homogenization. Also, toward the end of the book is a very fine short sequence about traditional Appalachian music.

Morgan has always been intrigued by science and math, and a few poems here testify to that interest. "Music of the Spheres" calls attention to the "music" of subatomic activity, and "Pi" contemplates the important irrational number denoted by that Greek letter.

Technically there is much variety here. Some of these poems are in free verse, some are loosely metrical, and some are rigidly iambic. There are poems in rhymed quatrains, poems in rhymed couplets, two pantoums, and a sonnet. Many poets attempting such formal variety produce terribly mediocre work, but that's not the case with Morgan. In many cases you read these poems and admire them before noticing their structure.

Readers who love Morgan's novels and short stories, as well as those who admire his earlier poetry, will find cause for great celebration in TOPSOIL ROAD.

The intricacies of Southern political and social thought are very well reflected in Michael P. Johnson's study of secession in Georgia. Johnson rejects the traditional explanations of Georgian secession: that Georgians misinterpreted the threat posed by Lincoln's election and fell victim to Fire-eater rhetoric or that the electorate, allowed a new role in determining state policy in the wake of the collapse of political parties in 1860, led Georgia out of the Union in a wave of passion. He follows up on Eugene Genovese's view that slavery's ascension to a priority greater than that of the Union's preservation led to secession, and that the movement was led by the planter elite. Working on the basis of contemporary explanations of the crisis, Johnson argues that secession was a rational decision made by state leaders. Significantly, though, he identifies the threat behind secession as being not the external threat posed by abolitionism so much as the internal threat within Georgian society itself. He stresses the fact that deep divisions manifested themselves in the debates over secession, in Georgia and across the South. The planter elite, he suggests, saw the crisis as a test of their hegemony in the state; they supposedly worried that their fellow slaveholders would be won over by Republican rhetoric eventually, especially if it manifested itself in the form of patronage enticements. Because slaveholders were unsure as to the long-term commitment to slavery by members of their own circle, they seceded in order to forestall the penetration of the Republican party into Georgia. According to Johnson, there was no ideological consensus behind the state's secession.

Johnson describes a double revolution in Georgia. The first revolution was one for home rule; this involved eliminating the external threat to Southern society, and it was achieved by the decision to secede from the Union. Attention was then turned to a revolution that was internal in nature, the struggle for who would rule at home. This problem was addressed by drafting a new state constitution, one guaranteeing power to the planter elite. He concludes that "secession was driven by political conflict not only between the South and the North but also between the black belt and the upcountry, slaveholders and nonslaveholders, and those who feared democracy and those who valued it." In the battle for who would rule at home, Johnson describes how the elite created a "patriarchal republic" designed so as to mollify internal discord within white Georgian society. This "patriarchal republic," free of the potential excesses of democracy, would soon be destroyed by the War Between the States.

This is an excellent book which documents the effects of forced desegegation. By tracing the history of segregation in Louisiana and then focusing on three parishes (counties) in different stages of forced desegregation, the authors highlight the negative effects of this misguided policy.

What is unbelievable is that judges are still advocating busing when the authors have clearly demonstrated the negative effects, not only for the majority white students, but ultimately, for the black students as well.