Georgia Books

The fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education in 2004 brought forth a plethora of related media. In addition to the tributes, there were also dismissive and negative revisionist histories claiming, for example, that Brown had no impact at all, or worse, that it actually interrupted and delayed the inevitable process of desegregation already unfolding in the South following WWII.

James C. Cobb (Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia) responds to what he sees as distortions of Brown's legacy with scholarly guns a'blazing in this series of lectures presented for the Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures . In the first chapter, he makes quick work of the revisionists' claims that Jim Crow teetered on the brink of collapse by 1954. The second chapter challenges writers who claim that Brown's contribution to civil rights progress was ultimately less significant than its role in energizing white resistance to it. The final chapter argues that Brown and the ensuing civil rights movement accomplished more than its critics acknowledge, not insignificantly by allowing blacks the opportunity to embrace their identity as southerners. He examines the current trend of black migration to the south, as well as the trend to self-segregate not merely by race, but economic class.

His writing is clear, concise and engaging, his research rock solid and his attitude unabashedly liberal. I appreciated the inclusion of his personal observations as a white Southerner growing up under Jim Crow. And he doesn't mince words; in the final chapter he notes that dismay with the civil rights movement could be due in part to expectations. He writes "Many black and white liberals assumed that removing racial constraints on opportunity would somehow produce an unending stream of Alice Walkers but never a Condoleezza Rice." (Or, for that matter, a Clarence Thomas.)

This slim volume packs a wallop, and is must reading for anyone interested in Brown in particular, or Jim Crow in general.

As a native Atlantan who grew up in Buckhead, I read Ms. Barnard's book with great interest. While my initial reason for picking it up was the hope that I might discover some leads on tracing my family ancestry (which I did), I found myself skipping around in the book and haven't found a passage yet that failed to catch my interest.

Even though the story of Buckhead could easily be done in multiple volumes, Ms. Barnard has successfully summarized the history of the area in a very concise and interesting manner, managing to hit the high points as well as the lows.

The Buckhead area has grown almost beyond belief, today being almost unimaginably different from my childhood in the 50's. More than once I found myself wishing for the simpler days, and Ms. Barnard managed to help me resurrect many memories long forgotten.

A very satisfying book. Thanks to Ms. Barnard for writing it!

Exceptionally useful manual for all who deals with local government budget management. This collection of discussions can be used as a basic source on the formulation and execution of the annual budget. This book equally addresses the needs of public administration students, instructors and practicing public financial managers. This easy-to-use guide is presented in two parts: part 1 focuses on budget development, opening with readings designed to place the process of budgeting in the context of political economy, offering a review of budget setting, revenues and expenditures ; in the second part the authors discuss budget execution, cash and bebt management, controls (i.e. established accounting procedures), reporting practices, and acountability devices (auditing). Both parts introduce the reader to the variety of skills, perspectives, and concepts critical to budget management. Very reliable source of information about traditional practices and latest developments in the field of budgeting at affordable price.

Business and Project Management for Contractors (Georgia Edition)

This book entered my life during my 2nd year of college, and it opened my eyes in so many profound ways. Dr. Peter Cranford details keen aspects of life in the World's Largest Insane Asylum (in central Georgia), and offers you a tantalizing glimpse into a disturbing world not often discussed in mainstream forums. You'll hear amongst his fascinating diary, tales of mad experiments and desperate crimes, top secret asylum procedures, twisted statistics, and MANY shocking tidbits of hysteria. If you're interested in asylum histories and data, or human psychosis then this is the book for you. You'll certainly have a hard time putting it down! :D

This volume is a comprehensive field guide for the butterfly collector interested in the species of Georgia. All species known to occur in the state are listed, as well as all known strays. Resident species are all shown in accompanying photographs, and distribution charts advise the reader as to the location and time of year to search for each species. Includes butterflies and skippers. Review by Bill Cummings

For those who know it, the Huguenot-derived name "Pettigrew" immediately evokes the associated word, "Gettysburg." Brig. Gen. Johnston Pettigrew was prominent on the first day of that battle, as the commander of Pettigrew's Brigade, and on the third day, as the commander of Heth's Division, which included his brigade. Pickett's Charge might as well have been called Pettigrew's Charge, or, as Clyde Wilson suggests, "Longstreet's Assault." But as it is, there is still no Gettysburg without Pettigrew. Not long after that Fourth of July that coincided with the fall of Vicksburg and Pettigrew's own birthday, the Army of Northern Virginia was without Pettigrew. He was killed in the chaos of a rear-guard action at Falling Waters, and his loss was much lamented, for it seems that everyone knew his quality.

Pettigrew's Civil War career was not consonant with his ability, and that was almost certainly a matter of luck. He was active in organizing the defense of Charleston before the Fort Sumter crisis but played no great role in the thing itself. He was wounded and captured at Seven Pines or Fair Oaks Station, the beginning of the Seven Days. Exchanged, he served under D.H. Hill in the abortive action at New Bern and at the affair at Blount's Creek. Clyde Wilson has not written for us the story of a Confederate brigadier, however, but an account of a mind and sensibility that could not be completely expressed in the Civil War.

Johnston Pettigrew grew up as the scion of a distinguished and landed family in North Carolina. He excelled at school and at the university at Chapel Hill. He was soon surveying stars for Matthew Fontaine Maury at the National Observatory. But what was Pettigrew to do as his lifetime calling? Though Pettigrew eventually did much legal work in Charleston, Wilson has shown how his energy and sensitivity were focused by his travels in Europe. Unusually mature for his age and exceptionally responsive to the various environments, Pettigrew's two trips to Europe were the high points of his life. His mind and imagination were excited to a remarkable degree by his encounters with others, and, as always with him, there was a gap between his emotional and intellectual responses. Pettigrew was later to declare that he wished as his lifework to write a history of the Moors in Spain. He did not live to do it, but his serious intent speaks volumes about his imagination, his historical sense, and his ability to think past the provinciality that is often the lot even of intelligent people.

Pettigrew did not write of medieval Spain, but he did write a book, in the spring of 1861, about Spain, his travels there, and his reflections. He had the ability to see past the surface into the depths of culture and character. Though a man of his age and place, he could and did respond to Spain as a 19th-century romantic with a pronounced streak of intellect. He loved the Spanish dignity and passion, the hierarchical sense, the manners of the don and the do-a. And he was quite explicit about the political affinities he sensed between the American and European Souths. As he wrote on entering Spain for the second time,

Adieu to a civilization which reduces men to machines, which sacrifices half that is stalwart and individual in humanity to the false glitter of centralization, and to the luxurious enjoyments of a manufacturing, money age!

On his first trip to Europe, Pettigrew had learned that he could not enjoy the values of the English and the northern Germans. He instinctively was pulled to the south, where he became as besotted by Italy as many another has been. But then there was Spain, for which he felt a high degree of knowing identification. For a man of his background and cultural assumptions, his ease in relating to another world was remarkable, and so was his mastery of languages. Pettigrew was not unique in that regard, however, for the story of American attraction to the repudiated continent is old and varied. Even so, his degree of self-consciousness, his sense of himself as a Southerner, and his sense of himself and his heritage in historical perspective are notable achievements by a man of many talents. Pettigrew's sensibility is oddly modern in its development. He seems to have arrived at something like Henry Adams' position 40 years before that South-despising ironist did. And therefore, Wilson's life of Pettigrew is much more than a military tale. Rather, it is a valuable contribution to American intellectual history.

As Professor Wilson has said of Pettigrew's work at the very beginning of the Civil War,

Still, strangely, the zeal with which Pettigrew immersed himself in his pressing tasks did not at all preclude his customary ironic detachment, the hallmark of a good mind able to rise above its immediate circumstances.

Just so. The fact that this particular cavalier, lawyer, scholar, and scientist wore gray and was glad to do so says much about his own age, but also something about ours. Clyde Wilson's elegant performance is addressed not only to the shade of Johnston Pettigrew and the world that died not long after he did but to the consequence of that collapse and the continuing cultural calamity. Carolina Cavalier is an antidote for, or a rebuttal to, the contemporary propaganda that suffuses the airwaves and clots the presses. It is the best historical work I have seen in a long time and an invaluable statement about the Civil War, its meaning and character, its causes and issues, and its abiding significance. I missed this book upon the occasion of its first publication but can now only feel that I was lucky in that mischance. I have had the serendipitous pleasure of a delayed first reading, and, in that glow, I think I will be far from alone.

J.O. Tate is a professor of English at Dowling College on Long Island.

This review originally appeared in the December 2002 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

This book is written through the eyes of a middle-class, ten year old girl during the Civil war. This book is wonderful and has many extroidinary ocurrances. This young girl is truly amazing and this story has given m a better view of what life was like for someone just like me during the Civil War. I would definantly recommend this book to anyone and everyone!

Historic Oglethorpe County Inc. did a very commendable job compiling their Cemeteries of Oglethorpe County Book. The county is divided into sections and the cemeteries for each section are listed into a corresponding section of the book. It is alphbetically indexed in the back, and each cemetery is shown with its latitude and longitude co-ordinates. They even interviewed families to get names for people that are buried in various plots that do not have headstones. For the genealogist researching Oglethorpe County, it doesn't get any better than this. Barbar

THIS TERRIFIC BOOK RECAPTURES BLACK WOMEN'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF THE UNIQUE LIVES THEY LED. WE KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT FREE BLACK WOMEN IN THE SOUTH AND THESE LETTERS AND DIARIES BRING TO LIFE A NEGLECTED CHAPTER OF OUR HISTORY AND THEIR EXPERIENCE.....PLUS THE DIARY OF THIS YOUNG BLACK WOMAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR IS A COMPELLING HISTORICAL VOICE. THE EDITOR HAS DONE A TERRIFIC JOB SETTING THESE VOICES IN CONTEXT SO WE CAN ONCE AGAIN HEAR THEIR STORIES AND READ THE WORDS OF LOST BLACK WOMEN FROM THE PAST.