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Author: James Seay Brown Publisher: University of Alabama Press ISBN: 0817321179 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
"In 1971, Jim Brown moved to Birmingham with his young family to start his first full-time teaching job at Samford University. Within days, he was fishing on the Cahaba River; soon, the entire Brown family was regularly exploring the river's twists and turns and the myriad creatures living there. A European historian by training, Brown began to broaden his areas of expertise to fulfill the range of his teaching responsibilities. As his intellectual horizons expanded, Brown quickly became fascinated with the history, culture, and environment of his new home. In the years to come, Brown's curiosity would lead him on a series of literal and investigative journeys across Alabama's physical and cultural landscape which he endeavored to bring back to the classroom. Upon retirement in 2016, Brown set to work weaving together an account of the encounters and activities that unfolded in his early years in Alabama as the state slowly made him into one of its own. Incorporating personal experiences and insights drawn from a lifetime of learning and teaching, the resultant memoir begins with his first brush with the Cahaba River and spans topics ranging from salamander migration, shape note singing (with Wayne Flynt, no less), disappearing arts and crafts traditions, land use patterns over time, historic preservation, experiential education, birds, bats, railroad hollers, and more than a few fish tales along the way. Interspersed throughout with insights drawn from Brown's academic career, Distracted by Alabama traces a very personal, historically informed, and idiosyncratic profile of a region in transition in the mid to late twentieth century. It also stands as testament to the ideals and value of liberal arts education in a society"--
Author: James Seay Brown Publisher: University of Alabama Press ISBN: 0817321179 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
"In 1971, Jim Brown moved to Birmingham with his young family to start his first full-time teaching job at Samford University. Within days, he was fishing on the Cahaba River; soon, the entire Brown family was regularly exploring the river's twists and turns and the myriad creatures living there. A European historian by training, Brown began to broaden his areas of expertise to fulfill the range of his teaching responsibilities. As his intellectual horizons expanded, Brown quickly became fascinated with the history, culture, and environment of his new home. In the years to come, Brown's curiosity would lead him on a series of literal and investigative journeys across Alabama's physical and cultural landscape which he endeavored to bring back to the classroom. Upon retirement in 2016, Brown set to work weaving together an account of the encounters and activities that unfolded in his early years in Alabama as the state slowly made him into one of its own. Incorporating personal experiences and insights drawn from a lifetime of learning and teaching, the resultant memoir begins with his first brush with the Cahaba River and spans topics ranging from salamander migration, shape note singing (with Wayne Flynt, no less), disappearing arts and crafts traditions, land use patterns over time, historic preservation, experiential education, birds, bats, railroad hollers, and more than a few fish tales along the way. Interspersed throughout with insights drawn from Brown's academic career, Distracted by Alabama traces a very personal, historically informed, and idiosyncratic profile of a region in transition in the mid to late twentieth century. It also stands as testament to the ideals and value of liberal arts education in a society"--
Author: Margaret Anne Barnes Publisher: Mercer University Press ISBN: 9780865546134 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Writer Barnes tells the story of a corrupt, crime-ridden city, examining events that unfolded during 1916-1955. Phenix City had been a 19th-century refuge from law enforcement for 120 years until three men in succession challenged the status quo. To reconstruct the story the author draws on notes and private papers of the principals and investigators; depositions, trial transcripts, and court records; daily newspaper coverage; and transcripts of wire-tapped recordings of the city's gamblers and politicians. No index or bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Lella Warren Publisher: University of Alabama Press ISBN: 0817302883 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 673
Book Description
Using the history of Alabama and the stories of her pioneering ancestors, Lella Warren created the Whetstone clan who settled Alabama in the 1820s, helped lead it into the prosperity of the 1850s, and fought for it in the War Between the States. The historical background of Foundation Stone is authentic, but, more, it is a compelling story about believable characters. The story of these people—three generations of Whetstones—captures the American pioneering spirit. As an unidentified reviewer described the novel, “Lella Warren’s ‘Foundation Stone’ is the long, well-told chronicle of a family that loved and hoped and struggled in a difficult world, unaware that they symbolized an era and a way of life.” Foundation Stone was published in September 1940 and was on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list September 1940-February 1941, along with Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again.
Author: Elizabeth Mozley McGrady Publisher: ISBN: 9781627464628 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Change is inevitable. We all know this and yet it does not make the decisions that go along with change any more palatable. Often we wait, as if circumstance itself will alter. Then later, if we are wise, we acknowledge that we control only ourselves and
Author: Mike Bunn Publisher: University Alabama Press ISBN: 0817359281 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 185
Book Description
An illustrated guidebook documenting the history and sites of the state’s origins Alabama’s territorial and early statehood years represent a crucial formative period in its past, a time in which the state both literally and figuratively took shape. The story of the remarkable changes that occurred within Alabama as it transitioned from frontier territory to a vital part of the American union in less than a quarter century is one of the most compelling in the state’s past. This history is rich with stories of charismatic leaders, rugged frontiersmen, a dramatic and pivotal war that shaped the state’s trajectory, raging political intrigue, and pervasive sectional rivalry. Many of Alabama’s modern cities, counties, and religious, educational, and governmental institutions first took shape within this time period. It also gave way to the creation of sophisticated trade and communication networks, the first large-scale cultivation of cotton, and the advent of the steamboat. Contained within this story of growth and innovation is a parallel story, the dispossession of Native groups of their lands and the forced labor of slaves, which fueled much of Alabama’s early development. Early Alabama: An Illustrated Guide to the Formative Years, 1798–1826 serves as a traveler’s guidebook with a fast-paced narrative that traces Alabama’s developmental years. Despite the great significance of this era in the state’s overall growth, these years are perhaps the least understood in all of the state’s history and have received relatively scant attention from historians. Mike Bunn has created a detailed guide—appealing to historians and the general public—for touring historic sites and structures including selected homes, churches, businesses, government buildings, battlefields, cemeteries, and museums..
Author: Alan Jacobs Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019983167X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way. In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices. Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.
Author: Casey Cep Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 110194787X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
This “superbly written true-crime story” (Michael Lewis, The New York Times Book Review) masterfully brings together the tales of a serial killer in 1970s Alabama and of Harper Lee, the beloved author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who tried to write his story. Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members, but with the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative assassinated him at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend himself. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more trying to finish the book she called The Reverend. Cep brings this remarkable story to life, from the horrifying murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South, while offering a deeply moving portrait of one of our most revered writers.
Author: Caleb Johnson Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1250169097 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 349
Book Description
"I can’t remember the last time I read a book I wish so much I’d written. Treeborne is beautiful, and mythic in ways I would never have been able to imagine...I can’t say enough about this book."—Daniel Wallace, national bestselling author of Extraordinary Adventures and Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions An Honorable Mention for the Southern Book Prize One of Southern Living's "Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018" and one of Library Journal's "Books to Get Now" Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time, she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked, and where the peaches they left behind now grow, Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change—and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won’t withstand much more. So she tells the story of its people: of Hugh, her granddaddy, determined to preserve Elberta’s legacy at any cost; of his wife, Maybelle, the postmaster, whose sudden death throws the town into chaos; of her lover, Lee Malone, a black orchardist harvesting from a land where he is less than welcome; of the time when Janie kidnapped her own Hollywood-obsessed aunt and tore the wrong people apart. As the world closes in on Elberta, Caleb Johnson’s debut novel lifts the veil and offers one last glimpse. Treeborne is a celebration and a reminder: of how the past gets mixed up in thoughts of the future; of how home is a story as much as a place.
Author: Nanci Kincaid Publisher: Algonquin Books ISBN: 1565129024 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
A big-hearted novel of a Southern woman’s trials and tribulations: “Kincaid’s voice is a true original” (Alice Hoffman). When Bobby died in a car wreck with another woman at his side, Verbena was left with five kids, a small house, and a big empty place in her heart. She did her best to pick up the pieces—and pick up where her husband left off, paying the mortgage, mowing the lawn, and raising her children so they’d turn out reasonably decent. Five years later, Bena’s got two daughters who have run off with no-good men, a backyard full of marijuana plants none of her kids will own up to, and a semi-personal relationship with Jesus. But she’s trying. And when she’s ready to fall in love again, she knows whom she wants: Lucky McKale. And despite the fact that he’s married, he seems to want her too, in this “touching account of a middle-aged widow who puts her life back together even more spectacularly than it came apart . . . A well-told and likable tale” (Kirkus Reviews). “Bena Eckerd has one of those fabulously unpredictable and noisy households that can both drive you crazy and make you sane again . . . Down-to-earth humor . . . and the nonstop plot twists keep us riveted to the adventures of her unruly clan and her messy search for love and meaning.” —Orlando Sentinel “Exuberant . . . Kincaid has a terrific knack for capturing Southern speech, customs, and characters.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer
Author: James Seay Brown
Author: James Seay Brown
Author: Margaret Anne Barnes
Author: Lella Warren
Author: Watt Key
Author: Elizabeth Mozley McGrady
Author: Mike Bunn
Author: Alan Jacobs
Author: Casey Cep
Author: Caleb Johnson
Author: Nanci Kincaid