In this periodic feature, we highlight books either about Alabama people or events, or written by Alabama authors. Summaries are not reviews or endorsements. We also occasionally highlight book-related events. Email submissions to [email protected]. Due to the volume of submissions, we are unable to feature all the books we receive.
Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta – And Then Got Written Out of History,
by Howell Raines, Crown, $21.99 (Confederate history) Part epic American history, part family saga and part scholarly detective story, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Raines brings to light a piece of submerged history: How an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabama yeoman farmers, called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy.
Southern Rivers: Restoring America’s Freshwater Biodiversity, by R. Scot Duncan, The University of Alabama Press, $34.99 paperback (Environmental studies) Nature writer and Alabama Audubon executive director Duncan looks at the perilous state of the Southeast’s rivers and the urgent need to safeguard their vitality. The region’s rivers are the epicenter of North American freshwater biodiversity and home for a wide array of aquatic animals.
A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility and Innocence Lost, by Frye Gaillard, NewSouth Books, $25.62 (Civil rights/memoir) Gaillard brings a deeply personal history to this pivotal time in American life. Now in softcover, the 2018 book explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through political and social movement of the times: civil rights, Black power, women’s liberation, the war in Vietnam and the protests against it. Gaillard is a native of Mobile and has served as a writer in residence at the University of South Alabama.
Unique Eats and Eateries of Alabama: The People and Stories Behind the Food, by Nicole Letts, Reedy Press, $27 (Culinary studies) From Big Bob Gibson’s north Alabama white sauce to the Gulf Coast’s West Indies Salad, the state claims a unique dining culture. Some of the state’s best-known chefs and artisans are highlighted in this culinary cruise from north to south and east to west.
Blood at the Root, by LaDarrion Williams, Labyrinth Road publisher, $18.89 (YA contemporary fantasy) A teenager on the run from his past finds the family he never knew existed and the community he never knew he needed at a historically black college and university (HCBU) for the young, Black and magical. The idea for the book came from a simple question that the author, who is from Helena, posted on social media: “What if Harry Potter went to an HBCU?” The book will be released May 7, 2024.
Cold War Alabama, by Melvin G. Deaile, Ph.D., Arcadia Publishing, $24.99 (Alabama history) The 50-year Cold War began following World War II and was a struggle between ideologies, militaries, economies, athletes and each nation’s ability to reach space. Alabama played a key role in that conflict; this work relies heavily on period photos to document the many aspects of Alabama’s role in the Cold War.
