AM: Not long ago, Joe, we did an interview about your book, Ghostly Demarcations. Just months later we’re now discussing The Theoretics of Love, your new novel that NewSouth Books, which is right down the street from my office, published about the time we did that last interview. Let’s start by having you speak broadly about this […]
“Historic Alabama Courthouses: A Century of Their Images and Stories,” by Delos Hughes
April 6, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Julia Jordan Weller If the walls of courthouses could talk, they would whisper the experiences of those who worked, litigated, and governed over the last 150 years or more. Some courtrooms have evolved from open air forums, such as those held in Wedowee until 1836, to some of the grand domed buildings that […]
“Forsaken,” by Ross Howell Jr.
February 8, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl American Experience is a television history series covering a range of people and events in American history, documentaries which bring to life compelling stories that inform our understanding of America. We have to imagine timelines: March 25, 1931, a fight breaks out between white and black young men riding as […]
“Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters,” by Frye Gaillard
October 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Rod Davis A beautifully written personal and moral quest in search of insufferable truths, Frye Gaillard’s Journey to the Wilderness brings as much clarity to the lingering darkness in the Southern soul in a few emotionally honest pages as I have seen in volumes of hagiography, professional Southernism and clichéd pensives that plague […]
“The Path Was Steep,” by Susan Pickett
September 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Morgan O’Grady Susan Pickett was on my mind as I crossed Alabama’s state line after leaving West Virginia the same morning: her well-fed babies, her cutting hair in the yard and selling the excess food from her father’s land. She was an Alabama native transplanted to West Virginia during the Depression. Her memoir, […]
“Emigration to Liberia,” by Matthew F.K. McDaniel
April 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall Emigration to Liberia is the story of the nearly 500 African-Americans who left Columbus, Georgia, and Eufaula, Alabama, from 1853 to 1903, to emigrate to Liberia, the West African nation that was founded in 1822 by United States colonization. Matthew F.K. McDaniel marshals evidence from written correspondence and newspapers to piece […]