Georgia Books

If you're a native Atlantan there are a few things that you will hold dear to your heart--the swan-shaped cream puffs at the Swan Coach House at the Atlanta Historical Society, the Ladies Lounge at the Fox Theatre, the frozen chicken salas at Rich's Magnolia Room, the old magnolia tree at the old Ponce de Leon Ball Park, Mary Mac's pimento cheese, and--at the top of the list--Priscilla the Pink Pig Flyer at Rich's. It's just the most unique thing about Christmas in the city. We might not have snow or ice skating, but we have Priscilla!!! This book is just adorable. The book has a scrapbook section in the back so I printed out photos of my daughters on Santa's knee (in 1964!)and the photos we took of my grandbabies Kylie, Josh, and Paige at the Pink Pig last year (the 50th anniversary)and gave copies to each of those grandchildren. They just though it was so "cool" to see their mommies at their age--in a Mini-skirt kilt and saddle shoes and horn-rimmed glasses! This book is such a blessing and a treasure!

If you're an Atlantan--a true, old-line Atlantan, that is--you'll love this book! Riding the Pink Pig was THE way to get into the Christmas spirit for anyone who grew up in the 1950s or 1960s (although the ride continues to the present day). This book is packed with so many memories, pictures of Santa's Secret Shop, recipes from the old Magnolia Room downtown (remember the frozen chicken salad), it just about made this old fool cry. Although the Rich's name is not going to be around too much longer--which is a crying shame itself!--the Pink Pig Flyer continues and this book is a must-have celebration of something uniquely Atlanta and too rapidly disappearing.

Even after being a Civil War buff for years and years, it was after reading this book that I finally realized that this war wasn't a soldier's war but really a war about normal people who brought all their fears and worries and preoccupations with them to camp and the battlefield and learned to adjust to being soldiers, and that is what makes this book so interesting. Eli rarely speaks of battle or carnage, but rather focusing on the mundanities of camp life, or musing on some piece of news from back home, or apologizing for how he can't finish his letter correctly because "the boys are pestering me", or that he misses his mother more than anything in the world, that he'd love to be back on his "settlement", begs the local girls not to all get married before he can get back, or giving salutations to his "connections" and "inquiring friends".

The book doesn't have any footnotes except for an introduction at the beginning and a list of short bio's on the other people mentioned in the book. Landers was a middle to lower class yeoman farmer from Gwinnett County Georgia and it shows in his provincial worries, and his punctuation and spelling (very humerous), but Eli is an incredibly blunt, verbose, and honest writer. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and pours out his feelings and quite detailed observations of everything around him. He is constantly talking about what everyone is doing, what they're cooking, what the weather is like, where the camp is located, who's sick, and who dies. In one poignant and chilling part of the book, he mentions the death of a comrade who succumbed to fever and in a rare civilian letter, his sister writes back recounting the same soldier's funeral. He also gives out numerous instructions to his mother and sisters as to ploughing and sowing fields, taking care of the newly born horses (which consequently grow and cause him heartache for he doesn't want to give them up), giving advice to his little nephew, clarifying that, despite rumors, he hadn't "been killed" (he has to do this quite often), explaining the reasons for why his letters are "poor" or "sorry", and commenting on local news from the homefront. The book actually gives an interesting window into what life was like on an average farm in the 1860s thanks to the spattering of civilian letters and Eli's responses to his family. But rarely does he speak of the war itself except for a patriotic phrase here or there, or a brief overview of where they might be headed or what they had recently done. He often expresses his enjoyment of camp life and how he feels about the idea of a battle or just hanging about with his comrades. Yet, also, in nearly every single letter he mentions how he yearns for his home, misses everyone, wishes he was at home, and tells his mother that he's reconciling himself with God for the Eternal Life to come and that she should too. The awareness of death, from the very beginning to the end of the book, is acute and gives this work a dark and foreboding side. Tragedy strikes hard and often, the family endures quite a bit of hardship (also fascinatingly pointed out in a handful of surviving letters from the homefront that explain what's in shortage back home), and makes you marvel at the strength of the human spirit.

Through the course of the book Eli always sounds like a fellow fresh off a farm, though alternately he quite obviously sounds like he becomes a veteran soldier. But as his anecdotes become more war savvy as the book progresses, he never seems to stop being a civilian and that is what gives this collection it's profundity. These were the boys who fought this war and the people who endured it.

A fantastic, if not different, book. Not full of exciting battle descriptions, but an earnestly compelling, very poignant, and always fascinating look at the day to day life during the Civil War of one very endearing young man.

Excellent history of the inner feelings of this soldier during his time in the army of the Confederacy. Simply, these are, word for word, his letters home to his mother. We get his thoughts, not the thoughts of a reviewer or historian. A true glimpse into the camp, not the battles, is what we find in Mr. Landers' letters home.

Debra Susie and I were a couple from approximately 1978-1982, during which time and subsequent to our relationship, she was researching, interviewing and writing her dissertation at the Florida State University. I particularly remember Dr. Susie's steadfastness against some faculty who were not enthusiastic about her dissertation subject; her meticulous commitment to her research and writing; her excellent writing abilities; her passion for the subject; and much more. The book is well worth the read!!!

Dr. Susie is presently employed (2006) as the Executive Director at Florida Impact (234 South Magnolia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301 -- 850.309.1488). Florida Impact is a social justice advocacy and lobby organization funded by Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic traditions. She has been employed there for well over ten years.

"The book inspired me to have a baby," says a reader, "on my own."
Debra Ann Susie left her home in Miami, Florida, to attended Florida State University. In the time of receiving her PHD, she wrote a dissertation. Her subject was brilliant; Midwifery.
The book involves the broad-range of interviews from [mainly] southern, black midwifes in the Georgia/Florida rural areas.
This charming book is truthful, and gaining, and will leave you in a new education of this life-producing job.
`In the way of our grandmothers' is brilliant, and captures the amazing beliefs, and funny stories from midwives; our grandmothers.

Mr. Bragg's book is a well-researched, well-written, and immensely valuable regimental history of this little-known but quite important Georgia unit. The GSL was a crack outfit by any standard, despite being no more than a state militia, and it's contributions in the Atlanta and Georgia Campaigns have been sadly overlooked until now. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book is an entertaining read as well, not common in these narrow subject histories.

This book covers, as none other has ever attempted, the little known Georgia army The Georgia State Line during the Civil War. Bragg very successfully leads the reader through the tangled web of state units and clearly shows what the State Line was and what it did during the war. He also provides rosters which are invaluable for this little known organization. Bill Bragg is the acknowledged expert on the Georgia military units as this well documented study demonstrates.

Hugh T. Harrington
author of: "Civil War Milledgeville, Tales From the Confederate Capital of Georgia," "Remembering Milledgeville, Historic Tales From Georgia's Antebellum Capital" and "More Milledgeville Memories."

John Ross is one of the most revered Cherokee chiefs... it is impossible to understand the Cherokee Nation and its people without the study of Ross. Author Gary Moulton gives splendid insight into the life and times of one of the most complex and often misunderstood American Indians--Cherokee Chief John Ross. Ross, a 1/8th Cherokee and 7/8th Scotsman, and framer of the Cherokee Tribal government, was well-known for his harsh protest of the controversial 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Moulton does justice by presenting the Ross position and the outcome that spawned a bloody-factional Cherokee feud--which continued into the American Civil War. Moulton's insight also includes recollections and the death of Ross in 1866.

Matthew D. Parker

Throughout times of turmoil for his people, Chief John Ross made the best of many a bad situation. From the removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma to the fracturing of the nation during the Civil War, Ross struggled against internal and external enemies to carve out a bright future for the Cherokee people. Moulton has done a fantastic job with this biography, weaving together a compelling tale of this often misunderstood leader who faced repeated insults from political leaders in Washington and opportunistic members of his own tribe.

Steve Courtney has produced a biography of Joseph Twichell that will enthrall not only Twichellites and Hartfordians but also anyone who loves good biography. I found this book a marvel of prodigious research, brilliant writing, and fair-minded analysis. It stands with the best of biographies and immediately brings to mind Robert Richardson's masterful explorations of Thoreau ("Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind") and Emerson ("Emerson: The Mind on Fire"). Because Mark Twain still enjoys great fame and Twichell was one of Twain's closest friends, this book will be pitched mainly to Twain lovers and scholars. But don't let that fool you. If you're interested in biography as an art-form or simply want to immerse yourself in the social and intellectual currents of nineteeth century America, this book demands attention. Highly recommended!

This is a terrific gem of a book about a local Hartford preacher whose life from humble beginnings in emerging industrial Connecticut intersects with many of the history changing events of the day - the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Guilded Age, and the turn of the century - all while maintaining a close and highly amusing friendship with Mark Twain.

This book is well written and truly brings to life some of New England's best religious, political, and literary personalties.

Should be required reading for any scholar of early/mid-American history.

When I read Just Another Georgia Romance, there was not one moment I did not realize - with all of the gushy verbiage, tainted memories, and heated embraces - that I was deep into a steamer. Being a romance aficionado, I loved all that. But when I found I was reading a story certainly possibly true, Calo's plot took me over the top with an intensity that far surpassed any that I have experienced in today's romantic fiction. I struggle right now to describe my feelings as I read the last few pages, but I can't yet sort them. This was a once in a lifetime romance of heroic sensibility.

I don't know if Lorillard, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, or the other last-standing U.S. cigarette makers should sue Zolen Caló - or place a copy of Just Another Georgia Romance in every motel room in the United States. Although Caló does not condone smoking and goes so far as to put a Surgeon General-type warning upon his pages, he wholly romanticizes tobacco, the tobacco industry, the economic benefit of tobacco production to the South, and even describes the act of smoking the cigarette with such pleasurable and genteel language that I found myself tempted to try one! If only I could have chosen a brand. (He manages to give recognition to most every U.S. make from World War I forward.) With the love of his life being a tobacco heiress, you know that Blake Mathison has to smoke at least a few, most of which, tongue in cheek, turn out to be his least favorite and perhaps one of the most lethal (filterless Lucky Strike). As for the romance itself: tender - truly tender, touching, and honest to the core...even down to the post-last-puff passionate lip-locks of free-wheeling Blake with the sublime and unblemished Natalie.

When reading Porter's fiction, we cannot help but acknowledge that she was a consummate stylist. We marvel at her narrative voice as she fleshes out characters such as Miranda Gay, Maria Concepcion, or Granny Weatherall, and in recognizing this, one must congratulate Joan Givner for realizing that Porter, when it came to her own life, was also a stylist in her creation of a feminine literary persona, a persona so potent that only the most perservering of biographers can penetrate it. Givner has done just that in her work. Because of her tenacious research and attention to detail, she gives us a study that is often anecdotal but always honest, and no doubt that combination makes for a great biographical read. She gives us the real Porter, and at the same time never lets us forget that when Porter did find the time to write, she was one of the great literary talents of the twentieth century.

Katherine Anne Porter was as fascinating a character as any fictional work she ever created. Self-educated, she wrote some of the most complex and well-crafted short stories of her time and concocted a personal image of glamour and refinement despite her very modest origins. As multi-married as a movie queen, she bewitched dozens of men, marrying some of them decades her junior. Hindsight has withered the illusion of her physical appeal, despite all the talk of her beauty, her photographs to contemporary non-bewitched eyes reveal a woman deep into middle age despite her chic poses. Past forty when she burst on to the literary scene in the 1930's, Porter live in genteel poverty until she hit the jackpot in her seventies with epic novel A SHIP OF FOOLS earning her millions. She would go on for almost another two decades before she died at age 90 in 1980. Sharply opinionated and seemingly easy to anger, Porter nevertheless could be a great friend as she was to Robert Penn Warren and the novice Eudora Welty. This book is a fascinating, detailed account of her long life. Author Givner has since taken a more negative personal view of Porter in other works, fortunately here she seems to admire this woman who carved a major place in the world of letters for herself from very humble beginnings.

As an African-American who lives in Kennesaw, Georgia the book was a priceless gift about the history of where I live.

I hope Ms. Lassiter does a follow-up and soon.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK IT TELLS ALL ABOUT OUR FAMILIY'S HISTORY. I REALLY LIKE IT BECAUSE IT SHOWS YOU WHO THE PEOPLE ARE SO YOU CAN ACTUALLY KNOW AND TEACH THE YOUNGER CHILDREN ABOUT THE FAMILY.

The "Young Left-hander" compiled a great recap of GT Football history as seen from the sidelines and pressbox. A must have for any Tech fan!

This book is phenomenal!! If you are a Tech fan read this now!! A great history of the last half decade of Tech football!!! Kim King delivers his story of the ups and downs of the Ramblin Wreck over the last half century!! Check it out!!