Mercer University Press Search Results

This unique natural history exploration of Florida by members and correspondents of America’s first research natural history museum, Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences, reveals the science of discovery and collection of unknown plants, animals, fossils, and artifacts of ancient peoples. The early naturalists, Thomas Say, Titian Peale, Thomas Nuttall, John James Audubon, John LeConte, John Torrey, Hardy Croom, Alvan Chapman, Asa Gray, Clarence Moore, Henry Fowler, Henry Pilsbry, Francis Harper, and others were inspired to explore Florida in the tracks of William Bartram, the colonial explorer of British East and West Florida and author in 1791 of TRAVELS.

Rebecca and Ronald Akins and their three daughters appeared to be a typical suburban family in 1970 Macon, Georgia, but the attractive facade hid a family in crisis. After their 1974 divorce, Becky took the children to South Florida where she pursued a life of gambling and partying while her daughters were left to fend for themselves. Fueled by popular books and films, she changed her name and her daughters's to Machetti, a name she believed to be appropriate for the Mafia. This is the story of Rebecca Machetti, a cold-blooded woman whose prosecutor described as "pure evil" and her three daughters who lived through years of abuse before finally finding peace and normal lives.

The Spirit Divided is a collection of letters, reports, and recollections in which Union army chaplains describe their motives and methods, their failures and achievements. Some threw away their somber black uniforms and became dashing staff officers. Scorning these “chaplains militant,” others were, in the words of a battlefield journalist, “bearers of the cup of cold water and the word of good cheer.

A mother's love, religious faith, and ferocious patriotism transform an impoverished immigrant boy into one of the Greatest Generation heroes. This book takes us inside the incandescent life and tumultuous times of Judge Anthony Alaimo, WWII bomber pilot, POW, and indomitable escape artist, whose ?delity to the law is equaled by his compassion and outrage at injustice

This book traces the life of Isidor and Ida Straus, both German Jewish immigrants who arrived as children in America in the early 1850s. Isidor’s father, Lazarus, was an itinerate peddler in Georgia, but within one generation the family became the wealthy owners of Macy’s Department Store in New York. A Titanic Love Story follows the Strauses’ life from Talbotton, Georgia, where an anti-Semitic incident caused them to move to nearby Columbus. The devastation of Columbus at the end of the Civil War brought the family to New York, where Isidor met and eventually married the young Ida Blun. The Strauses were wealthy Jews within their New York community, and as people committed to the welfare of their family, their city, their country, and those less fortunate than themselves, they dealt with their own grief, illness, and occasional brushes with anti-Semitism. Ironically, their final happy days in the south of France lead to their unexpected sailing on the Titanic.

Thomas R. R. Cobb (1823-1862), a Georgia jurist who, perhaps more than any other one person, influenced the form that the “second revolution” took in Georgia (1860-1861), has been described as a prototype of a Southern intellectual. A product of the “Old South,” Cobb’s influence upon national events (up to and during the Civil War, especially in Georgia) was considerable. Cobb was a “representative Southerner” whose ideas “expressed the trends then current in Southern thought.” This investigation of the life and influence of Thomas R. R. Cobb provides significant insight into the attitudes of his time.

In this anthology of Civil War memoirs, we get a clearer impression of some of the chaplains who served during that Great Conflict. Chaplains were among the most omnipresent observers on the battlefield, and some wrote extensively about their experiences. Eighty-seven of the 3,695 chaplains who served in both armies wrote regimental histories or published personal memoirs, not counting a multitude of letters and more than 300 official reports. Yet, there has never been an extensive collection of memoirs from chaplains of both the Confederate and Union armies presented together. In this groundbreaking work, many of the Confederate chaplains write that they opposed secession and submitted to it only when war was inevitable. Moreover, some of the ministers who became chaplains were active in ministry to black slaves. They spoke out against the neglect and abuse of those held in bondage both before and during the war. For example, Reverend John L. Girardeau formed a large mission church for slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, before the war; Reverend Isaac Tichenor criticized the abuses of the slave system before the Alabama Legislature in 1863; and Chaplain Charles Oliver preached to black laborers in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864 with the thought that more needed to be done for them. While these efforts may appear trivial in the face of the enormity of the entire slave system, they do reflect that a social conscience was not completely lacking among the Southern chaplains. From the battlefield to the pulpit, Confederate chaplains were surprising and complex individuals. For the first time, explore this aspect of the great struggle in each chaplain’s own words.

Bill Merritt grew up in Atlanta, Georgia during the turbulent years between the end of World War II and the Vietnam War. A joyously unreconstructed Southerner, he looks on with amazement as Atlanta changes from a sleepy Southern town into the City Too Busy to Hate. This was the time of Martin Luther King and Ivan Allen, but also the time of Lester Maddox, the Temple Bombing, great moral certainties, Elvis, Klan rallies, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a corrupt political system keeping some of America’s finest statesmen in office (some since the Teddy Roosevelt administration), and a man named Armstrong walking on the moon. Merritt’s family is eccentric and colorful, occasionally courageous, often self-centered. This is the story of the way the Civil Rights Revolution looked to Southerners: to decent people trying to honor their heritage while realizing the time had come to let go of parts of that heritage, and how difficult that letting go was made by the outsiders who most wanted change. This is the story the way Southerners remember it—and tell each other.

What does it take for a regular guy to climb some of the highest mountains in the world? FIVE BIG MOUNTAINS takes you there, instantly placing the reader and the author on a steep glacier on Pico de Orizaba with equipment trouble and the tough decision any high altitude climber inevitably faces--should he turn back or keep going to the summit? The central theme of the book is that with proper preparation, careful planning, persistent training, and the best guides, even an amateur with little mountaineering experience can climb and reach the summits of some of the most famous mountains in the world, though there are risks involved that need to be minimized.

Mercer University Press proudly revives this acclaimed real-life account of what the fictional Scarlett O’Hara saw. Life in Dixie During the War, first published in 1892, ranks among the best first-person accounts of the American Civil War. Mary A. H. Gay eloquently recounts her wartime experiences in Georgia and bears witness to the “suffering and struggle, defeat and despair, triumph, and hope that is human history.”

Martha M. Ezzard and her physician husband John are among the pioneers in the movement of professionals trading busy city careers for a return to the land. While this story about saving a family farm is distinctly Southern, it typifies the national locally grown movement which has begun to sweep the country. Locally grown foods call for wines that are a taste of the local earth—what wine aficionados call the terroir, the soils and climate that give them unique flavors not found in California or Burgundy or anywhere other than, in this case, Tiger Mountain.

Rebel Yell: An Oral History of Southern Rock presents the story of a musical genre born in the backwoods, highways, and swamps of Macon, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969 and peaking in popularity during the 1970s. This history of Southern rock is told by the musicians, roadies, fans, and recording industry folk who lived it. Drawn from literally hundreds of hours of interviews with the author, the book focuses on the "big four"--The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Marshall Tucker Band, and The Charlie Daniels Band--while delving into the careers of other great bands like The Outlaws, Bonnie Bramlett, Cowboy, Wet Willie, and Molly Hatchet. The story is enhanced by the photography of Kirk West, Bill Thames, and others, and includes many never-before-published images. Also included are a series of "Top 20" lists--including the best Southern rock vocalists, guitarists, songs, and more.