Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H827
ISBN: 9780881462494
Product Format: Hardback
Price: $22.00
When Asa Holbrook Staggs stepped into the cold-water spring that would later bear his name, he was drunk. The date was November 18, 1914. He pulled himself from the water, sober, cold, and converted to a new life in the Lord. Thus began the legend of Asa's Spring.
The Greats of Cuttercane tells the stories of people in Cuttercane, Georgia, the place of Asa's Spring. Written in the edged-in-humor style of caricature, these stories are still shared daily in the South.
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Product Code: P496
ISBN: 9780881465112
Price: $25.00
From the first conflict under General Nathan Bedford Forrest at Murfreesboro in 1862 to the desperate and often brutal battles with Union cavalry in the Carolinas during 1865, the 2nd Georgia was almost constantly in action. While the 2nd Georgia fought in such famous campaigns as Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, Knoxville, Resaca, Atlanta, and Bentonville, they also participated in deadly encounters at Farmington, Mossy Creek, Noonday Creek, Sunshine Church, and Waynesboro. Many of these conflicts are obscure to all but the most ardent Civil War historians. Returning in paperback, this is the first regimental history of a Georgia Cavalry regiment ever published. The 2nd Georgia served under both Nathan Beford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, and campaigned not only on home turf, but literally on the farm acreages of many of the unit's members.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P527
ISBN: 9780881465679
Price: $20.00
In her second book of essays, Kathy Bradley continues her examination of the natural world as a prism through which to understand the human experience. With her family farm in the coastal plains of South Georgia serving as the anchor, Bradley uses her observations of animal life, agriculture, and the seasons to create what others have called parables, but what she calls “a map key or decoder ring” for some of the dilemmas of twenty-first-century life.
The chronological stories, four years’ worth of tales that began life as newspaper columns, are inhabited by wild and unpredictable animals, civilized and unpredictable people, moons and cornfields, tides and floods and droughts—each described in sensory detail, each a metaphor rich in meaning. Bradley invites readers along on her wanderings in order that they might find their own meaning in the recounting of commonplace events and the lives of ordinary people.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H931
ISBN: 9780881466089
Price: $29.00
SOUTHSIDE relates the stories of the cotton mill workers and their families who lived and worked in Eufaula, Alabama, a small town on the Chattahoochee River, from the 1890s through 1945. Utilizing previously unpublished family records, oral histories, and other primary sources, author David Alsobrook relates the stories of the lives of these ordinary mill families—their hopes, dreams, joys, and tragedies.
Many of the photographs that appear in Southside are from personal family collections and have never been seen previously. Alsobrook’s chapter on legendary mill owner Donald Comer presents a fresh assessment of this remarkably enlightened corporate executive and his own particular brand of paternalism, which differed significantly from the philosophy of many of his contemporaries in the Southern textile industry.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H841
ISBN: 9780881462784
Product Format: Hardback
Price: $35.00
Life of Dreams is the first complete biography of Fred McFerrin Russell, one of the all-time stars in sports journalism. This biography details how the Vanderbilt man started with the Nashville Banner in the late 1920s, ascended to Sports Editor and remained with this paper loyally for sixty-nine years.
Russell built long-lasting relationships with coaches, players, and other writers in the business, and he wrote with a style that reflected his personality: fair, informative, and always with a sense of humor. He was a storyteller, whether it was athletes such as Bobby Jones or Red Grange; or coaches such as Red Sanders or Paul “Bear” Bryant, one of his closest friends. Outliving almost all of his contemporaries, Russell rubbed elbows with some of the greats of the twentieth century, with men such as Sparky Anderson, George Steinbrenner, Archie Manning, Vince Dooley, and Lou Holtz.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P423
ISBN: 9780881462340
Product Format: Paperback
Price: $18.00
Back to the Garden: The Goal of the Journey is the sixth book in the Journey series by beloved Southern author Jackie K. Cooper. The stories in this new book, as well as those in the past books, are based on Cooper’s memories of his
life in the South. Each story emphasizes an event in Cooper’s journey through life and builds an overall picture of a man who is trying to live a life that will get him “back to the garden” where he will be eternally happy as well as at peace. The stories vary in their portrayal of this everyman’s ability to deal with the humorous and the dramatic events we all encounter on our journeys.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H942
ISBN: 9780881466317
Price: $35.00
In September 1864, at a gathering in Macon, Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis admitted that two-thirds of his troops were absent, most without leave. Some had opposed secession to begin with. Others came to see the conflict as a “rich man’s war.” But it was hardship and hunger among their families that drew most soldiers back home. For more than a century and a half, historians have often ignored the Confederacy’s home front difficulties, which had so much to do with desertion and defeat. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Civil War knows that Confederate armies were outnumbered two to one. In a presumptive way, the manpower disparity is usually attributed to the North’s larger population. Lost in that simplistic view is the impact that desertion had on sapping the Confederacy’s fighting strength. And this is but one of the many critical issues historians too often brush aside.
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Product Code: P490
ISBN: 9780881464955
Price: $24.00
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.
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Product Code: P501
ISBN: 9780881465204
Price: $18.00
William Wright’s eighth collection of poems is an expansive personal journey that includes poems about subjects as varied as a farm woman forsaken by her husband, yellow jackets, insomnia, a mountain witch, salt marshes, a ditch filled with rainwater, and even a post-apocalyptic portrait of the last person on Earth. Beginning with “Prologue,” a piece that embeds a kaleidoscopic, novel-like vision of a small agricultural town and a few of its inhabitants, these poems capture the exterior world and recontextualize its many forms through a dreamlike logic, harnessing radiant imagery and strong aural texture through lines and words that stir both mind and heart. Here, Wright reveals how the most luminous forms often dwell in even the darkest subjects and images.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P565
ISBN: 9780881466560
Price: $25.00
To celebrate baseball and sing the national anthem for more than 100 minor league baseball games during a single summer, Joe Price drove more than 25,000 miles through forty states. Accompanied on the zig-zagging, cross-continental trek in an RV by his wife who had not been a baseball fan, he often shared games and baseball stories with relatives and friends along the way. Throughout the journey he experienced how baseball brings people together. Grounded in their respective communities, each ballpark reflected specific products, habits, and values associated with its location, and often evoked and formed distinct baseball memories and stories.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H947
ISBN: 9780881466379
Price: $35.00
Born 9 June 1838, James H. McNeilly grew up near Charlotte in Dickson County, Tennessee. At age thirteen, McNeilly was sworn in as deputy circuit court clerk of Dickson County. Raised in a devout Presbyterian home, he received his undergraduate degree from Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee. Just as the Civil War broke out, he had earned his Doctor of Divinity from Danville Theological Seminary at Danville, Kentucky. As McNeilly returned home to Dickson County, in the summer of 1861, he preached on Sunday and recruited troops for the Confederacy during the week. In October 1861, McNeilly traveled to nearby Fort Donelson, where he offered his services to the South.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H810
ISBN: 9780881462111
Product Format: Hardback
Price: $25.00
Interweaving his memories of boyhood Christmases in the dark days of the Depression and the details of present-day holidays with his grandchildren, Ferrol Sams demonstrates the deep, inescapable role of rituals in our lives and the importance of passing them on to each succeeding generation. Includes audio CD read by the author.
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