Georgia Books

This 142-page medium-large format book provides a great reference or keepsake about this charming city of Savannah, GA.

Focusing of historic houses in the city and the surrounding area, the lavish contemporary color photos of exteriors, interiors and gardens are juxtaposed with older black and white photos of the same houses and neighborhoods. This book rises beyond the coffee table/souvenir category because the author is a professional architectural historian.

Highly recommended for Savannah residents and visitors and anyone interested in historic Southern architecture.

Book Review

Brook, Stephen. Claws of the Crab: Georgia and Armenia in Crisis. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992.

This is another treasure of a book about the Caucasus that I unearthed from the bowels of the Wandsworth Public Library system in south London. Only one other person had borrowed it, back in September 1999 when I was working in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Reading this book, I discovered that Stephen Brook had got there before me when all the exciting stuff was happening at the start of the nineties. Independence from the Soviet Union, the overthrow of the tyrannical president Zviad Gamsakhurdia and the battles for Nagorno Karabakh - Brook was there or thereabouts. Studiedly sympathetic to the Armenians and guardedly admiring of the Georgians, Claws of the Crab is a rare eyewitness account of many of the events that made independent Georgia and Armenia what they are today. Suffice to say that there's been remarkably little change since the book's completion in 1992.

This excellent work of criticism and biography focuses on the works and the worlds of Harlem Renaissance poets Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1956), Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935, and Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966). Grimke was a published author of plays, short stories, and poetry. Dunbar-Nelson was an editor, poet, and journalist, and an important hostess to the famous and not-so-famous personalities of her time. Johnson was an educator, an assured formalist poet and a considerable social force with a memorable and important salon. Despite the minimization of Johnson's contributions in, for example the 1932 edition of "Who's Who in Colored America," in which she is listed as "housewife/writer," Dr. Hull is undaunted in her pursuit of the truthful meaning of these writers' full lives and contributions.

These writers led purposeful and productive writing and personal lives despite the fact that "at no point in their lives did anyone ever provide them with leisure to write." (p. 10). In addition, Dr. Hull asserts that black women participants' experience of the Harlem Renaissance had embedded in it the usual social tensions of caste and social class - plus the biggest handicap of all: femaleness. In most aspects, it was (not surprisingly) a man's world.

Dr. Hull has done something wonderful here. Photographs of each poet are included in the wealth of biographical material. The research is deep, as is the interpretation. Texts are excerpted. She has read letters, diaries, and a wealth of unpublished material. There is good historical and social context provided. This is a valuable, assured study. There are pages of notes, and a good index.

Definitely worth reading.

This book features photos of gorgeous Colorado gardens and interesting information about how each gardener planned, prepared, planted, etc. their garden. It has given me many ideas for my own flower garden, and it would make an ideal gift for any Colorado gardener -- or for anyone who is interested in how our gardening is different from other parts of the country.

From the front cover: "[The book] features seventy-two gardens singled out for their beauty and adherence to plants indicative of their area. ...Proctor's striking images depict the serenity and charm inherent in each garden...Geargia Garnsey, a Denver-based writer, provides lively profiles of each garden and the gardener who tends it."

Colors of Africa was Jim Kilgo's last book, he died from his cancer before publication. It is, perhaps, his best book and is truly a good and authoritative book. It is written in his inimitative style and soulds just as through he was talking to you. A great epitaph to a great writer.
R.L. Humphries

This easy read chronicles the reconsiderations of both spouses in the midst of a Dublin marriage. But don't let that fool you. This isn't a divorce book, or an angry book, or even a very sad book. Although it may be wistful, it is, at its core, a wonder book. Paul and Margeret, through their separation, rediscover the wonder in their lives, the wonder of their love, and the wondrous variety of life in Dublin.

Through their friends and acquaintances we see through to the heart of things, where sometimes there is kindness, sometimes there is hardness and greed, and sometimes there is something enduring and profound. These men and women illustrate the richness of the city and its neighborhoods, as they run the gamut from upper to lower classes, from conservative to liberal, from upright to criminal.

If you've been to Dublin, you'll see the character of the city in this text. If you've always wanted to go, you'll see the spirit of the place opening up to you. I just finished Roddy Doyle's _A Star Called Henry_ before I picked this up, and I'd say the two serve well together as Dublin bookends. Where Doyle is rough and dirty and biased toward the north side of the city, Adler is polished and quiet and more at home on the south side of the Liffey.

This collection of essays and articles is essential reading for anyone interested in America's architectural history. Classic articles on ways to examine architecture in relation to cultural geography are featured prominently in this volume. There are also important pieces of work that link architecture to the history of various ethnic groups, and I especially enjoyed articles that deal with contemporary forms of vernacular expression. This is an important book for anyone interested in the study of folklore, history, art history, and architecture. It could also be useful for practicing architects to read the essays for ideas to inspire their own designs.

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.