Virginia Books

In Commonwealth Catholicism: A History Of The Catholic Church In Virginia, Jesuit Gerald Fogarty (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Virginia) brings the people, places, and events that shaped the Virginia church vividly to life. He engagingly surveys the inhospitable colonial period, to the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, down through Vatican II. Here is a dynamic history of bishops, priests, nuns, politicians, advocates, enemies, and the laity. We meet such remarkable personalities as Father Matthew O'Keefe (who pulled a pair of revolvers on two men who had been sent to assassinate him) and Father William L. Lane (a black priest who worked tirelessly to create a Catholic presence among African Americans); and a host of others. Very highly recommended reading for students of American religious history in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, Commonwealth Catholicism is an impressive work of painstaking research, impeccable standards of scholarship, as well as a skilled and distinctive talent for narrative writing.

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!

Community Action At Work: TAP's Thirty-Year War On Poverty is a sobering look at the brutal battle against ruthless economic forces and low standards of living, as waged by the organization Total Action Against Poverty (TAP), which is headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia. TAP has endeavored to educate children, feed the homeless, leverage millions of dollars of economic assistance, initiated economic development, and much more to improve the quality of life for countless at-risk people. Community Action At Work is the detailed story of TAP, documenting their 30-year growth under the guidance of Cabell Brand, a businessman from Salem who was not content to earn money just for himself - he actively persuaded local governments to take advantage of federal anti-poverty legislation as early as 1965. Recommended as more than a fascinating history, but also as a model and guide for other charities that seek to actively combat the roots of poverty.

I have several of the Compass Guides, for every state we've visited or lived in. You're not going to find hotel or restaurant guide listings here. What you will find are great color photos and a terrific narrative story. You'll read all the history, learn about the top places to visit. These books are very nice to keep on the bookshelf for others to enjoy for years to come.

The book is full of all sorts of ideas, though it was small on "found" objects for furniture making. As I am new to miniatures, this book had all sorts of ideas for the novice to the master craftsman. Of course the book hawks back to the 70's and the color of pictures reflect this...the ideas were still innovative and creative. Great detail to every aspect of the dollhouse, including lighting, room arrangements and period pieces. I look forward to making the beautiful furniture featured in this "old school" book.

This is the very best book as a resource book on the Comstock Lode. It has the advantage of 100 years of history, the ability to amass all of the figures on such things as dividends, tons of material, freight.

It also hs the advantage of knowing what happened to the leading characters of the Comstock.

No student of the Comstock should be without this book.

This was a great book to read. It was very well written and easy to follow. I learnd a great deal about the civil war and the part Kemper played in it.

Chapter One: 'Negro Mobilization'

"It would appear that Virginia was not faced with a serious breakdown of its holding power over the Negro noncombatants until the closing says of the war. Flight into Union lines, however, or seizure by Union troops, though seemingly less extensive than in other parts of the Confederacy, was a cause of concern. In countless ways, the war came closer to the Virginia Negro than to other Negroes with the South. Both of the war governors, John Letcher ad William Smith, encouraged and supported Negro mobilization and war measures whereby the labor of Negroes contributed to the ability of the Confederacy to keep an army in the field. The Virginia Negro resided in what was not only the industrial heart of the South but also the major battle ground of the Civil war. Armed conflict greatly increased the technological and military demand for his brawn and his skills. Virginia's coal mines, ironworks, lead-smelting works, nitriaries, harness shops, arsenals, naval yards, and machine shops offer unique examples of the state's efforts to match Negro manpower to the need for increased production. The many diversified needs of the war involved the Virginia Negro in correspondingly wide variety of tasks-procurement operations, processing of minerals, fabrication of the weapons of war, transportation of war materials by land and by river, and construction of fortifications and defensive works. Probably no other southern sate offers a better example of the premium placed upon Negro manpower." (p.-15-16)

Chapter Two: 'Quartermaster and Commissary Noncombatants':

"Both the Quartermaster and Commissary departments were conscious of the logistical importance of Negro manpower, and they competed effectively with other departments for their services. As they competed effectively with other departments for their services. As they needs to increase the war output multiplied rapidly, both the Virginia and the Confederate Government made provisions for placing the black noncombatants at their disposal of the services of supply though military hire, impressment, and conscription. From February 1864 to March 1865 the Bureau of Conscription detailed 341 Negroes to the quartermasters scattered throughout Virginia. As in any undertaking which involves large numbers of persons, the Negros who met the needs of supply will forever remain anonymous to posterity, Yet thousands and thousands of Negroes played a vital pert in feeding, supplying, and sustaining Confederate combat forces in Virginia." (p.30)

Chapter Three: 'Naval Ordinance Works':

"In retrospect, the mountain blast furnaces, as they belched smoke and fire into the sky, dominated the industrial scene of the Valley. Industrial Negro labor was an indispensable factor as the Tredegar Iron Works wrestled to fulfill vital war contracts with the various bureaus of the War Department. The realistic war practices of this industrial plant were based, from the very outset of the war, on the full and extensive use of black manpower-and skilled and unskilled-in the procurement, transportation, and fabrication of raw materials and the delivery of finished products to Confederate fighting forces, southern railroads, smaller industrial plants, and various branches of the War Department such as ordnance, quartermaster, engineer, and the navy." (p.73)

Chapter Four: 'Transportation Laborers':

"It would perhaps be claiming too much to say that Negro manpower, the sinew of the war effort behind the scenes, provided Virginia with the means of continuing the uneven contest. Yet it is impossible not to conclude that had the Virginia's transportation arteries been deprived of Negro brawn and dexterity, the Virginia war effort would have been severely and seriously hampered."

Chapter Five: 'Negroes in Confederate Hospitals':

"Most of the thousands of Negroes-nurses, ambulance drivers, stretcher-bears, cooks, bakers, and other hospital attendants-are now nameless. Yet they bathed patients, fed the sick and wounded, administered medicines, aired and made beds, cleaned wards, maintained fires, and performed numerous other tasks, Other colored hospital attendants prepared food, washed clothing, whitewashed and repaired buildings, worked in the purveyor's office and the commissary, labored in the gardens dairies, and icehouses maintained by the hospitals, drove wagons, and so forth. Seldom were they mentioned n the journals of their day, and only a few were named or described in the memories of Confederate surgeons. On the other hand they never engaged in wholesale desertions. The decision to place them as attendants in the military hospitals not only freed many thousands of soldiers for military duty but considerably lightened the burden of caring for the sick and wounded in Confederate armies. Now wholly forgotten, these Negroes' names have no meaning today. Confederate medical histories seldom discuss the Negro. For the same reason, too, the story of Confederate logistics is incomplete." (p.129-130)

Chapter Six: 'Confederate Labor Troops':

"Virginia's fortifications and the labor force responsible for their construction have received less attention than other phases of the Civil War. Yet, from every part of Virginia, thousands of Negroes were called upon the encircle cities and vulnerable areas with cordons of earthworks, and their labor undoubtedly prolonged the war by preventing Federal invasions from seriously affecting the resources of the state. Their story not only provides new insights into the history of the warring South, but contributes to an understanding of the many ways in which the Virginia Negro was inextricable related with the Southern war effort. When weighted against the tragic theme of the stunted existence which resulted from his enslavement, the war discloses that he had a compelling effect on the course of the war and that his service was a key piece in the mechanism of Southern defenses." (p.163-4)

Conclusion: "Today, in a lonely unmarked grave, forgotten and unknown, lies the Confederate Negro-a casualty of History." (p.167)

Having met Mrs. Owens, I was suprised that she wrote a book about such dark things, but I enjoyed this book. She really captured the spirit of the people and the situation. Knowing some of the people the characters are based on, I could picture them in that situation. Although it's sad, dealing with the death of two children, it's a great book. I plan to read more of her books soon. Don't miss this one. It's great!

The cause and effective treatment for Cancer has been known for many decades. Dr. Virginia is a brave and brilliant researcher and this book clearly documents her journey of discovery, like so many before her. The underlying truth is pleomorphic microbes in every living cel, and how to control them. Educate yourslves....