South Books - Page 12

It's Not Necessarily Not the Truth: Dreaming Bigger Than the Town You're From

Jaime Pressly

Amazon Price: $17.15 List Price: $25.99 Not yet published By: William Morrow

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Editorial Review:

At times hilarious, at times harrowing - this is a memoir of a girl from the small Southern town of Kinston, North Carolina and later Southern California, who makes her dream - to be an Emmy Winning actress, model, and mother come true. Chapters focus on Jaime's relationships with the extremely colorful members of her family, her growing understanding of how their lives have been impacted by the forces of prejudice, power, privilege, love, loss, longing and, more specifically, how the lessons she learns from the choices they've made shape and inform her journey toward her re-creation of self and attainment of success. Jaime tells a story that many people can relate to and draw inspiration from. She was a small town girl from humble beginnings who never gave up the pursuit of her dreams. Filled with humor, wisdom and a unique voice all her own this book will reach out to millions of woman, particularly mothers of all ages, seeking a truly inspiring story.

Summer Snow

Trudier Harris

Amazon Price: $12.96 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Beacon Press Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $0.01

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Editorial Review:

Trudier Harris will tell you that African Americans who consider themselves Southern are about as rare as summer snow. But Harris has always embraced the South, and in Summer Snow she explores her experience as a black Southerner and how it has shaped her into the writer and intellectual she has become.

"Something between a nostalgic, inward-looking memoir and a collection of provocative, outward-looking essays on race, class, geography and gender."
—Paul Schnieder, O Magazine

"Harris thoughtfully weaves patches of personal history with discourses on topics so fundamental to her growth . . . You will be constantly amused by Harris's descriptive language."
—Herb Boyd, Black Issues Book Review

"Like Zora Neale Hurston, another great daughter of the South, Harris lets her vision be tempered by her love. And make no mistake, the South of Black Americans is a love story. Summer Snow reminds us of that . . . causes us to remember that . . . lets us celebrate that."
—Nikki Giovanni

Trudier Harris grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is the author of numerous books, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature; Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature; and Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. She is also coeditor of a number of anthologies, including The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. She is currently the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Weren't No Good Times: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Alabama (Real Voices, Real History)

Amazon Price: $10.95 List Price: $10.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: John F. Blair Publisher Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $7.63

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, hired writers, editors, and researchers to interview as many former slaves as they could find and document their lives during slavery. More than 2,000 former slaves in 17 states were interviewed. With Weren't No Good Times, John F. Blair, Publisher, continues its Real Voices, Real History ™ series with selections from 44 of the 125 interviews now archived in the Library of Congress that were earmarked as interviews with Alabama slaves.

Alabama was a frontier state. From the beginning, its economy was built on cotton and slavery and its laws were fashioned to accommodate both, which becomes obvious when related through the experiences of Alabama's slaves. A year after it obtained statehood, Alabama had a slave population of 41,879, as compared to 85,451 whites and 571 free blacks. By 1860, the slave population had swelled to 435,080, while there were 536,271 whites and 2,690 free blacks. When emancipation came to the slaves, Alabama's slave owners lost an estimated $200 million of capital.

These narratives will help readers understand slavery by hearing the voices of the people who lived it.

Up To My Armpits: Adventures Of A West Texas Veterinarian

Charles W. Edwards Jr.

Amazon Price: $15.56 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Iron Mountain Press Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $0.65

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

Up To My Armpits: Adventures Of A West Texas Veterinarian 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book started out very interesting and lighthearted. However, I am now about a third of the way thru and don't know when and if I will be able to finish it. It is about cows, cows, and more cows with an occasional story of a dog or cat. The stories all seem to be the same. I was hoping for a variety of animal stories.

Editorial Review:

A memoir of 50 years of practicing large animal veterinary medicine in the vast Big Bend country of Texas. Living in Marfa, Texas the Doc traveled far and wide to treat his patients - pregnancy testing cows, delivering calves, or extracting a deer horn or mesquite limb from deep in a cow's throat. Often working days with little or no sleep, the Doc was literally up to his armpits in work. His patients included horses, hogs, sheep and goats, and an occasional family pet - dogs, cats, skunks and turtles. He once declawed a pet mountain lion for one of his clients. The Doc has been stepped on, kicked, stomped, gored, scratched and bitten by his patients. Doc writes like a natural born story teller. Here is the life of a man you loved his work and who practiced it with compassion and dedication. He loves rugged West Texas. His clients were his friends. He particularly enjoyed the camaraderie of ranchers and cowboys and appreciated a well run cow work.

A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House (Voices of the Civil War)

Ellen Renshaw House

List Price: $35.00 By: University of Tennessee Press Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $9.38

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Pithy Comments on the Occupation of Knoxville 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Two g-grand nieces of Ellen House discovered these diaries in her trunk upon the death of an aunt. What a find! Ellen House had strong opinions and voiced them. The Siege of Knoxville (November 1863) is covered and Sutherland's footnotes make for GOOD history. Don't think, you WWII GIs out there, that "scuttlebutt" started in "our" war. There was plenty during the Civil War, some preposterous. Sutherland provides good interpretive notes. Highly recommended! Four stars only because there are a few gaps in Ellen's coverage of the War in Knoxville, but who can blame her. Deprivation was the order of the day.

Arkansas People--Looking Forward

Andrew Kilgore, Meg Kilgore

List Price: $36.00 By: First United Methodist Church Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $24.66

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During Wind and Rain: The Jones Family Farm in the Arkansas Delta, 1848-2006

Margaret Jones Bolsterli

Amazon Price: $13.22 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Arkansas Press Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $10.16

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Editorial Review:

In telling the story of five generations of her family and its farm in the Arkansas Delta, Margaret Jones Bolsterli brings together her own research, historical perspective, and family lore as it reaches her from the days of her great-grandfather down to her nephew. The result is a family saga that is at once universal and personal, historical and timeless. "During Wind and Rain" moves from the land's acquisition in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the 1927 Flood, the Great Depression, and the drought of 1930 to the modern considerations of mechanization, fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. The transformation of dense swamp and forest to today's commercial agriculture is the story of two hundred acres worked by people sowing their fate with sweat, ingenuity, and luck.From the hoes of Bolsterli's great-grandfather Uriah's time to her nephew Casey's machinery capable of cultivating an acre in five minutes, "During Wind and Rain" poignantly portrays five generations of farmers motivated by dreams of "a crop so good that the memory of it can warm the drafty floors of adversity for the rest of one's life."

Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction

Eric Foner

Amazon Price: $17.21 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Louisiana State University Press Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $14.41

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Editorial Review:

Freedom's Lawmakers is the first comprehensive directory of America's first generation of black public officials--those who held office during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War. With positions including congressman, justice of the peace, constable, and member of the legislature, the nearly 1500 officials listed here offer a panorama of the black community in all its diversity--freeborn and slave, Northern and Southern, rich and poor. The book draws on extensive research in the era's primary sources, and the voluminous literature on Reconstruction that has appeared in the past generation, providing information about the antebellum status, occupation, property ownership, military service, and other attributes of black officeholders. The concise biographies are augmented by 125 halftones, including seven composite photographs at the front of the book. In some cases, only a few pieces of information are available, but in a remarkable number of instances, the book traces the life histories of previously unknown individuals, most of them born as slaves, who played a role in America's first experiment in interracial democracy. The biographies follow many individuals into the twentieth century, illustrating the impact of these black Americans on post-Reconstruction society and the consequences for black Americans of the overthrow of Reconstruction.

Mosby's Memoirs (Southern Classics)

John S. Mosby

Amazon Price: $17.18 List Price: $22.90 Usually ships in 24 hours By: J.S. Sanders & Co. Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $3.98

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Good Story --- Reads Like an Adventure Novel 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 21 people found this review helpful.

Since I live in what might be called "Mosby's Back Yard" --- the Washington, DC suburbs of Northern Virginia --- I thought I should learn something about this man for whom several local streets, highways, and bridges are named. A friend recommended "Mosby's Rangers" by Jeffrey Wert; my wife suggested a new book, James Ramage's "Gray Ghost." But I opted to begin my study with Mosby's own account of his adventures: his own memoirs.

I know that old soldiers tend to exaggerate their war stories; and they occasionally ramble. But Mosby's Memoirs are still fascinating, and I think the exaggeration is kept to a minimum. The story does get a bit bogged down in Chapter 12 --- talking about events leading up to Gettysburg. The good colonel, like all soldiers, is also somewhat wordy discussing the merits and failures of various generals and officers in the war.

Still, all things considered, I found this to be quite interesting. I don't usually read military memoirs, but I enjoyed this. Now on to "Gray Ghost!"

Oh, another thing that made this book (and, presumably any book on John Mosby's exploits) fun to read: he mentions so many towns, roads, and places already familiar to me. Last weekend I took a drive to Beaverdam, VA just to see what was left of the train station near where the Yankees captured Mosby early in his career (he was shortly released). Couldn't find the station, but the tracks are still there! If you're familiar with Northern VA & the Shenandoah Valley, check out this book!

Editorial Review:

The story of the activity of this flamboyant commander and his men from his own perspective.

Claiming Kin: Confronting the History of an African American Family

Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs

List Price: $12.95 By: St. Martin's Griffin Amazon Marketplace: 15 new & used starting at $0.63

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

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

I thoroughly enjoyed Scruggs' book. She truly possesses the gift of language. "Claiming Kin" is more than a found-my-roots book. Her own story -- changing her name, journeying far from her Tennessean roots and embracing a spirituality that spoke to her soul -- is just as compelling as discovering one's enslaved forebears. She interweaves all of these aspects, which lead back to her relationship with her father. The result is a gift to unborn Scrugges, as well as readers.

Editorial Review:

A touching story of a woman's search for her family roots in the wake if the sudden death of her father.

Claiming Kin is a powerful and compelling story about a woman's quest to search out her roots upon the death of the father she barely knew. A former journalist hungry for the truth, her search into the past leads her from her hometown in Nashville, Tennessee, back to the birthplace of the Scruggs in nearby Williamson County. There she traces the family back to 1847 and the Scruggs Farm where her ancestors were once slaves. Her journey soon becomes spiritual and emotional, forcing her not only to examine her own beliefs in the importance of family, but also her religious beliefs as she turns toward honoring her ancestors. This is a tale that will capture the heart and mind.