South Books - Page 9

Days Of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky

John Ed Pearce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Among the darkest corners of Kentucky's past are the grisly feuds that tore apart the hills of Eastern Kentucky from the late nineteenth century until well into the twentieth. Now, from the tangled threads of conflicting testimony, John Ed Pearce, Kentucky's best known journalist, weaves engrossing accounts of six of the most notorious and long-running feuds - those in Breathitt, Clay, Harlan, Perry, Pike, and Rowan counties. Each of these feuds arose from distinctive circumstances and the clash of differing personalities, but all shared one trait - a determination to settle disputes by the gun rather than by the rule of law. Most began with petty grievances and ended only when most of the feudists were dead. Neither law enforcement officials nor the state militia occasionally sent in by an exasperated governor had much effect in stopping the bloodletting. What caused the feuds that left Kentucky with its lingering reputation for violence? Pearce asks. Who were the feudists, and what forces - social, political, financial - hurled them at each other? Did Big Jim Howard really kill Governor William Goebel? Did Joe Eversole die trying to protect small mountain landowners from ruthless Eastern mineral exploiters? Did the Hatfield-McCoy fight start over a hog? For years, Pearce has interviewed descendants of feuding families and examined skimpy court records and often fictional newspaper accounts to uncover what really happened and why. His story of those days of darkness brings to light new evidence, questions commonly held beliefs about the feuds, and puts to rest some of the more popular legends.

Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson

Jo Ann Robinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Interesting book. 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a great first-hand account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It gives great insight on the emotions of the boycotters, and the determination that kept them going. The book is a little slow at times, but it's well worth it in the end. It really shows the intricate details that made the boycott successful.

Strength and Weakness 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Robinson's book is truly a memoir, and I find this to be both a strength and a weakness. It gives the book strength because it is a complete personal account. Every piece of information is direct from not only a first hand observer, but moreover a participant. However it weakens the book because at points too much information was detailed. Especially information about already well documented events.

North Carolina: Then & Now (Then & Now (Westcliffe))

Kevin Adams

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I love this book. I know how hard and time consuming it must have been to put the book together. I live in North Carolina and it was great to see pictures of what it looked like years ago next to pictures of what it looks like now.

Editorial Review:

In North Carolina Then & Now, distinguished North Carolina outdoor photographer Kevin Adams takes us on a visual journey through the history and evolution of a changing North Carolina landscape. After looking at some 50,000 photographs of 19th and 20th century North Carolina, Adams set out to retrace the historic photographer's footsteps and document the changing land.

The resulting compilation of 115 pairs of then and now photographs is both a moving eulogy to the past and a thought-provoking forecast for the future. Adams' captions serve as helpful guides through this accessible history lesson, and deepen our perspective into the costs of "progress" and the challenges of historic preservation.

There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (Vintage)

Jason Sokol

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Whites 'n' rights 3 out of 5 stars.
14 of 16 people found this review helpful.

There's a lot to admire in Jason Sokol's "There Goes My Everything," but also a good deal to regret.

The idea was excellent. Why should history always be written by the victors? The civil rights movement in the South threw up many fascinating personalities and served up many dramatic incidents. Since, as Sokol says, it was done by black people, with whites almost helpless observers, the retellings naturally concentrate on the main actors.

There are many more and thicker biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. than of Ross Barnett.

But although southern whites may have been helpless against a tide of history -- Sokol's view, not mine -- they were not only passive actors. Even when they were, they went through mental changes -- conniption fits, many times -- that have an interest all their own.

Sokol set out to interview surviving actors, both converts to integration and diehard segregationists; and to ransack the archives for contemporary journalism, essays, reports by do-gooders etc. This is a dissertation for a degree in history, and it reads like it. Not much verve but plenty of detail.

To sum 400 pages in a sentence, Sokol found that the South was never of one mind about civil rights. No kiddin'!

Sokol's approach is somewhat loose-jointed, although chapters embrace themes. The best is the one on schools, but it also raises the most troubling conceptual problem for Sokol's thesis, which is that racism was both widespread and deep in the South.

Most people, most Southerners accept that it was deep, but events, including many compiled here, bring that into question. Racism was in the South's face because it was enacted into law -- rather late, too. Jim Crow took a long time to grow up. So, why did the racial system crumble so quickly?

Sokol does not give much background, but he does note that in 1948, Henry A. Wallace's run for the presidency comprised a biracial strategy in the South. "Wallace's efforts failed in the end, although his campaign showed that some southerners might oppose segregation if given a viable forum in which to do so."

For historical reasons, the South was a one-party region. Sokol never really takes on the issue of how much racism was at the service of politics, rather than the other way around, although in a remark or two he does indicate that he is aware of the question.

So, can a structure that is built on deep foundations be brought down by a moderate storm? As Sokol himself says, many -- in fact, the majority -- of southern places adopted and adapted to civil rights without storm and stress. A few incidents gave the lead to the many. Can indifference to skin color be racism? Can racists be indifferent to skin color?

It would not be hard to pick up a daily newspaper in 2007 and find examples of far more enduring racism elsewhere. When a memorial to those who gave their lives for civil rights in the South was proposed, only about three dozen names were collected; and the collectors could hardly be charged with trepidation. Why did the South resist so mildly?

Sokol doesn't ask the question, but he answers it in a way. Most whites were at bottom indifferent to race, as compared with, say, keeping schools open. They may have said they were segregationists, and as long as they didn't have to choose between segregation and something else, they were. But when blacks (and their white accomplices, of whom I was one back in the '60s) made them choose, segregation usually fell behind.

It certainly makes it difficult for a historian when his target will not hold still, but Sokol is good at switching back and forth.

The switching also contributes to the book's irritating repetitiveness. If Sokol wrote, "Of those white southerners who came to accept integration, more were repulsed by segregationist violence than attracted to civil rights demonstrations," he wrote it 20 times. And, again, why were they not attracted to violence in the `50s and `60s? They had lived with lynchings for a long time.

The chapter on "The Contours of Political and Economic Change" is Sokol's weakest. The economic argument would have benefited from some numbers. Also, it is more than questionable whether the decline of tenant farming had much to do with black assertiveness. The decline arrived in many places long before civil rights agitation did. See, for example, my review of a rare book by an actual white tenant farmer, "Throwed Away" by Linda Flowers.

I have other knocks against this otherwise interesting book, but I will mention just one more.

There is not a word about music, other than references to "We Shall Overcome." Sokol mentions, briefly, how sports led to interracial commonality. But submitting to an organization that has been integrated by somebody else is a far different thing from going up to the window as a private individual and buying a ticket to the James Brown review. I knew quite a number of southern white boys (but few girls) who got integrated that way.

Editorial Review:

During the civil rights movement, epic battles for justice were fought in the streets, at lunch counters, and in the classrooms of the American South. Just as many battles were waged, however, in the hearts and minds of ordinary white southerners whose world became unrecognizable to them. Jason Sokol’s vivid and unprecedented account of white southerners’ attitudes and actions, related in their own words, reveals in a new light the contradictory mixture of stubborn resistance and pragmatic acceptance–as well as the startling and unexpected personal transformations–with which they greeted the enforcement of legal equality.

Appalachia: A History

John Alexander Williams

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart.

Williams begins his story in the colonial era and describes the half-century of bloody warfare as migrants from Europe and their American-born offspring fought and eventually displaced Appalachia's Native American inhabitants. He depicts the evolution of a backwoods farm-and-forest society, its divided and unhappy fate during the Civil War, and the emergence of a new industrial order as railroads, towns, and extractive industries penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains. Finally, he considers Appalachia's fate in the twentieth century, when it became the first American region to suffer widespread deindustrialization, and examines the partial renewal created by federal intervention and a small but significant wave of in-migration.

Throughout the book, a wide range of Appalachian voices enlivens the analysis and reminds us of the importance of storytelling in the ways the people of Appalachia define themselves and their region.

Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence & Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley

John Gaventa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

"A over B": a study of power relations 3 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

John Gaventa has produced a very thorough analysis of the power relations within the Appalachian mining community, and the struggle of the miners against both oppressive coal companies and a corrupt union, the United Mine workers of America (UMWA). His research covers close to 100 years of coal mining in the Clear Fork Valley.

But his study isn't just a historic account. As he describes the relationship between the miners and the powers that dominate the social and political agenda in the Valley, Gaventa wants to explain why the miners didn't rise to challenge the obvious inequalities created by both corporations and union.

He claims that the ruling elites used indirect means of control to preserve the statu quo, means that fall into a "third dimension of power", according to Gaventa.
In the first dimension possible grievances are expressed but defeated on the political stage. In the second dimension the elite actually hinders the appearance of such challenges altogether, for example through threats or physical force, creating what Gaventa calls "non-issues".
In the third dimension, Gaventa claims, the elite shape the perception of issues, manipulating their subordinates' understanding of their own situation. So, as the miners' conditions became more and more desperate, or at least didn't improve despite many promises, they still supported the elite without having to be forced physically or psychologically to do so.

What Gaventa fails to include in his study is a thorough analysis of the miners' culture, their way of life and their believes, expressed in such social institutions like the church, or music. He so desperately tries to avoid the perception that the miners are in any way to blame for their situation that he sidelines them almost completely as victims of external (and later internal) oppression.
It has to be noticed, though, that Gaventa responds to the approach taken by social scientists in his time, who focused almost exclusively on culture, making the dominated force "B" practically solely responsible for the existing inequalities.

Nevertheless it is a good book on the nature of power. I advise you to watch John Sayles' 1980 movie "Matewan" to learn a little more about the struggle of the miners against the coal companies.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093509/ )
Review by: Sebastian Schoebel
sschoebe@iwu.edu

Who is John Gaventa?
(http://john-gaventa.biography.ms/ )

John Gaventa (1949 - ) is political sociologist and a fellow with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.
He received a MacArthur Award in 1981 for his work with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
Gaventa received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1971, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from until 1996. He started working at the Highlander Research and Education Center in 1976, and was director from 1993 until 1996.
His publications include
„X Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. ISBN 0252009851
„X We make the road by walking : conversations on education and social change. ISBN 0877227756
„X Communities in Economic Crisis: Appalachia & the South ISBN 0877226504
„X Global citizen action ISBN 1555879683


Other reviews
(http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-00985-1.html )

With Power and Powerlessness, a compelling work of powerful reportage and careful analysis, Gaventa joins other trusted Appalachian observers --- Tom Gish, Harry Caudill, James Branscome --- in explaining to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers."
-- The Washington Post

"Gaventa reminds us that the exercise of power has as much to do with preventing decisions as with bringing them about. Force, the threat of sanctions, the invocation of precedents, norms and rules to squash incipient revolt, the introduction of new rules or barriers --- these prevent demands from becoming issues."
-- Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the W. D. Weatherford Award of the Appalachian Society, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSA, Lillian Smith Award of the Southern Regional Council, V.O. Key Award of the Southern PSA,and the Governor's Award from the Kentucky Historical Society

Editorial Review:

Explains to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies, and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers.

Nashville Then and Now (Then & Now)

Karina McDaniel

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Photo Journal is both nostalgic and contemporary 4 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Long-time Nashville residents remember the city during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, when downtown was a bustling business district, especially Church Street and Fifth Avenue.

There were various department stores (Harvey's, Castner-Knott, Cain-Sloan, Montgomery-Ward, Sears-Roebuck, Grant's, and Loveman's), five-and-ten-cent stores (Woolworth, McLellans, and Kress), and movie theaters (Paramount, Tennessee, Fifth Avenue, Knickerbocker, Loews, and Crescent). This was at a time before the exodus of such establishments to suburban shopping malls.

Using some extraordinary images from the city's past, paired with the same views today, Nashville Then and Now offers a visual tour of the city's most enduring landmarks, showing how the city has developed over the years.

With side-by-side archival and contemporary photos, the book shows the Parthenon in Centennial Park, a building constructed for the Tennessee Centennial in 1897; Andrew Jackson's Hermitage; and homes and businesses in Germantown (north of the Capitol) and Edgefield (East Nashville).

During the Civil War, writes the author, Nashville was "the most heavily fortified city in North America," a key supply base for the Union army's campaigns in the western theater. The book's cover features a picture of the state's Capitol taken in 1862, showing Union troops camped on the grounds.

Another photo compares the original Fort Negley, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill, with the restored fort, which was opened to the public in Dec. 2004. In the background is the modern skyline of Nashville.

The text was written by Karina McDaniel, a Nashville resident who came to Tennessee from her native Germany by way of Brazil and Waterloo, Alabama. McDaniel operates the photographic section for the Tennessee State Library and Archives specializing in the restoration, reproduction and preservation of historic photographs and documents.

Contemporary photographs were taken by Aubrey Watson, a lifelong resident of Nashville. Watson is a freelance photographer, lecturer and writer whose work has been published in books, magazines, corporate annual reports and advertisements.

The Andrew Jackson Hotel stood at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue North and Deaderick Street. With 350 rooms, the 12-storey building, at that time the largest hotel in Tennessee, was equipped "with every known modern convenience including a luxurious bath and telephone." It was demolished on June 13, 1971.

The 240-room, six-storey Maxwell House Hotel opened for business in 1869 and advertised steam heat, gas lighting, and a bath on every floor. It was destroyed by fire on Christmas night 1961.

The Hermitage Hotel, Nashville's first million-dollar hotel, which opened in 1910 and advertised its rooms as "fireproof, dustproof, and soundproof, with prices starting at $2 a night."

Other photos show the Ryman Auditorium, the "mother church" of country music, which was for many years the home of the Grand Ole Opry; Music Row on 16th Ave. South; and, in the shadow of the Capitol, "Hell's Half Acre," the city's red-light district, where prostitution, bootleg whiskey, and gambling houses flourished.

Sites of interest along Broad Street are Tootsie's Orchard Lounge, the Ernest Tubb record shop, the U.S. Customs House, Hume-Fogg High School, and Union Station.

Among the stately homes pictured are Woodlawn, Sunnyside, Cheekwood, the Belle Meade Mansion, Traveller's Rest, the Grassmere/Croft House, and the Belmont Mansion. We also see Jubilee Hall at Fisk Univ. and Kirkland Hall at Vanderbilt Univ.

My biggest disappointment? No photo is shown of Sulphur Dell, the home of the Nashville Vols, a Double-A baseball team in the Southern League. I have many fond memories from the 40s and 50s, when my dad took me to watch the likes of Charlie Workman, Charlie Gilbert, "Tookie" Gilbert, Smoky Burgess, Carl Sawatski, Pete Mallory, Babe Barna, and Buster Boguskie.

Nashville Then and Now is a delightful nostalgic photojournal of "the Athens of the South" and "Music City, USA."

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville, Tennessee, is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville publishing house.

Editorial Review:

Known today as the Country Music Capital of the World, Nashville was first settled by Native Americans as early as 8000 BC. French fur traders arrived around 1717, and by 1779, 'Fort Nashborough' was officially established. In 1843, the settlement, now renamed 'Nashville,' became the capital of Tennessee. Since its early days, Nashville has had a colorful history, surviving both the Civil War and two cholera epidemics. This city, once home to Daniel Boone and President Andrew Jackson, is now home to the Grand Ole Opry. With side-by-side archival and contemporary photos, Nashville Then and Now gives readers a visual tour of the city's most enduring landmarks, like the Parthenon, built for the Tennessee Centennial in 1897, and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage.

Coastal North Carolina: Its Enchanting Islands, Towns, and Communities

Terrance Zepke

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good Investment! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

We bought this in a bookstore during our vacation and were so glad we did. As we visited places, we read what the book had to say about its history and historic sites. I really enjoyed the highlighted boxes filled with interesting trivia. The photos of what places used to look like were also helpful and interesting. Our family answered the quizzes found at the end of each section. As a middle school teacher, I am looking forward to using it as a reference for my classes. The Fun Ways to Learn, also found at the end of each section, will be especially helpful.

Editorial Review:

•North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Upper and Lower Coasts are full of enchantment, from the magical waters to the stunning islands, imposing lighthouses, and captivating lore. Author Zepke brings you: •History and heritage of coastal communities like Manteo’s Fort Raleigh, where Sir Walter Raleigh established settlements in 1585, and Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of modern aviation •Main sites and attractions like Cape Hatteras’s tallest lighthouse in the United States and Wilmington’s 230-block historic district •Complete listings of boat ramps, marinas, golf courses, and spots to practice unusual sports such as kitesurfing and hang gliding. •Little-known natural gems such as Bear Island’s Hammocks State Park and the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge

Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow

Leon F. Litwack

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Been in the Storm So Long, Leon F. Litwack constructs a searing, unforgettable account of life in the Jim Crow South. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary documents and first-person narratives from both blacks and whites, he examines how black men and women learned to live with the severe restrictions imposed on their lives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Emancipation had been a time of unparalleled hope, laden with possibility, but the great changes black Southerners envisioned proved to be illusory. Litwack relates how black schools and colleges struggled to fulfill the expectations placed on them in a climate that was separate but hardly equal; how hardworking tenant farmers were cheated of their earnings, turned off their land, or refused acreage they could afford to purchase; how successful and ambitious blacks often became targets of white vio-lence and harassment. Faced with evidence of black independence and assertiveness, the white South responded with a policy of oppression and subjugation that systematically "disrecognized" black people.

By maintaining rigid patterns of racial segregation, manipulating the judicial system, and enforcing ignorance among blacks, the white South sustained unprecedented levels of violence, brutality, and intimidation. Yet despite being faced with these overwhelming odds, many blacks found ways to resist and circumvent the system. Litwack shows how blacks not only coped with crushing poverty and misery, but also found refuge in their own institutions and managed to preserve their humanity and dignity through religion, work, music, and (frequently subversive) humor.

Presented before, but never in such a thorough, wrenching manner, the history of this deeply scarred period is essential to any understanding of the state of race relations in America today.

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Texas

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A bowl-side companion 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

The UNCLE JOHN'S BATHROOM READER series presents collections of one- and two- page trivia that are perfect for reading when diversion is required.

The PLUNGES INTO TEXAS volume focuses on a wide range of Texas lore, covering history, celebrity, food, politics, travel, and other bizarre bits of esoteric information. There are smidgens about the origin of Big Tex, the down-and-dirty personal life of Sam Houston, the ghostly cat who haunts the capitol, and the legality of dinning on road kill.

From LBJ to Red Adair to ZZ Top, stories about the movers and shakers of the Lone Star State offer the reader quick snippets to amuse and entertain while other business is at hand. No Texas home should be without it.

Editorial Review:

Especially for armchair (or throne room) travelers and trivia buffs, Uncle John has compiled over 300 pages of interesting stories, little known facts, and gossipy tidbits about the Lone Star State. This outsize state has no shortage of tall tales, colorful characters, and strange tourist attractions, and readers in any room in the house will be fascinated with the doings of Ima Hogg, George and George W., the Great Mosquito Festival, the first oil well, the Confederate Air Force, Larry McMurtry, LBJ, ZZ Top, Nolan Ryan, the Cadillac Ranch, the Dallas Cowboys (and Cowgirls), and much, much more.