Mercer University Press Search Results

Moving and filled with unexpected ideas and imagery, The Color of All Things is a love letter from one man to one woman, but it offers love from each of us to all of us. Brimming with a touching and generous joy, this is a book of everyday needs that can only be filled with a genuine and lasting love. This is the third volume of poetry from Philip Lee Williams, following on his Elegies for the Water and his national book of the year (Books and Culture magazine) The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram. Like his other volumes of poetry, The Color of All Things moves slowly through the natural world without sentimentality but with surefooted grace and lovely rhythms. Georgia poet laureate Judson Mitcham says that in Williams’s poetry we hear “the distinctive voice of a poet who knows how to tell the stories that matter, how to hold still and take a good look at the natural world and let himself be filled with praise, a poet who knows how to find the right prayer and how to pray it.”

This unique book, originally published in a limited edition in 1982 and out of print for many years, is the most comprehensive collection of Civil War letters written by residents of Southeastern Alabama and Southwestern Georgia to be published. Poignant in emotion, informative in detail, and broad in scope, the correspondence contained here provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the Civil War and its effect on individuals and families from an intensely personal perspective. The writers, the great majority of them unlettered and expressing themselves in a disarmingly honest manner in their heartfelt missives, collectively paint a compelling portrait of a watershed moment in national history from a regional viewpoint. They make well-known events tangible and lesser-known sidebars illuminating.

Good ole boy Dickie Frye vanishes from the Georgia hills and the urbane Fletcher Carlyle bursts onto the New York publishing scene, winning the Nobel Prize for literature. But when a psychotic rampage lands Carlyle in Weatherhaven, eminent psychologist Anton Kohl finds himself talking to Dickie Frye. Kohl’s instincts tell him Frye is not lying—but what he says can’t possibly be true. A fallen priest comes out of Sumerian mythology, the love of Kohl’s life comes out of his past, and a chicken comes out of a posh apartment on Central Park West to meet his fate. Anton Kohl’s carefully constructed world is about to be deconstructed.One part fable and one part Southern yarn, Kiss of the Jewel Bird soars from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Manhattan, rewriting history and opening a window onto a wider, more magical world, where the path to destiny is anything but straight.

To the Gates of Atlanta covers the period from the Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain, 27 June 1864, leading up to the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 20 July 1864, and the first of four major battles for Atlanta that culminated in the Battle of Jonesboro, 31 August and 1 September 1864.

To the Gates of Atlanta also gives the important, but previously untold stories of the actions and engagements that befell the sleepy hamlet of Buckhead and the surrounding woods that today shelter many parts of Atlanta’s vast community. 

From Smyrna to Ruff’s Mill, Roswell to Vinings, Nancy Creek to Peach Tree Creek, and Moore’s Mill to Howell’s Mill, To the Gates of Atlanta tells the story of each as part of the larger story which led to the fall of The Gate City of the South.

In the Beginning highlights the history of the world’s largest religious memorial to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Inspired essays on education, social justice, nonviolence, peace, ecumenism, and civil and human rights are offered in honor of Lawrence Edward Carter, Sr., founding dean of the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel.

This book is a lasting tribute and valuable contribution to the history and educational mission of Morehouse College.

Contributors include Lewis V. Baldwin, Thomas O. Buford, Delman L. Coates, Jason R. Curry, Norm Faramelli, Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Barbara Lewis King, Douglas E. Krantz, Bill J. Leonard, Otis A. Maxfield, Echol Nix, Jr., Harold Oliver, Peter Paris, Samuel K. Roberts, Prince El Hassan bin Talal, Harold Dean Trulear, Edward P. Wimberly, Vincent L. Wimbush, and Virgil Wood.

Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas was an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834 to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia. At the age of fourteen she began and kept a diary for forty-one years, documenting her life before, during, and after the Civil War. In 1851 she graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia. Her life is an amazing story of survival and transformation that speaks to women in our own time.

When it opened in October 1864, Camp Lawton was called “the world’s largest prison.” Operational only six weeks, this stockade near Millen, Georgia, was evacuated in the face of advancing Federal troops under General Sherman. In that brief span of time, the prison served as headquarters for the Confederate military prison system, witnessed hundreds of deaths, held a mock election for president, was involved in a sick exchange, hosted attempts to recruit Union POWs for Confederate service, and experienced escape attempts. Burned by Sherman’s troops following its evacuation in late November 1864, the prison was never reoccupied. Over the next 150 years, the memory of Camp Lawton almost disappeared. In 2010, the Confederate military prison was resurrected—a result of the media event publically showcasing the findings of recent archeological investigations. This book not only summarizes these initial archeological findings, but is also the first full-length, documented history of Camp Lawton.

RISE AND SHINE! is an engaging, funny, and poignant memoir about a Southern son and his life’s relationship with food. Johnathon Barrett takes you on a decades-long journey of culinary exploration. Successfully melding those early days of learning the basics of Southern fare and later stretching his culinary skills, Barrett demonstrates in this narrative his formula for a successful casual dinner or a formal black tie affair. With several menus and 100 recipes ranging from down-home picnic offerings such as ‘Joyce’s Don’t Mess with Success Pimento Cheese’ to a magnificent platter of ‘Grouper Meunière,’ the author provides a wonderful array of delights for contemporary cooks. This culinary love letter to Barrett’s parents and other loved ones who raised him will make you laugh, maybe shed a tear, and fill your hearts with a renewed appreciation for the magic that can happen in a family’s kitchen.

The Allman Brothers Band was formed in 1969 by Duane and Gregg Allman, along with Berry Oakley, Dickey Betts, Butch Trucks, and “Jaimoe.” Their musical combination of the elements of rock, blues, jazz, and country was hugely successful and continues to stand the test of time. Filled with more than two hundred captioned images, this new book chronicles Jack Weston’s collection and other items of The Allman Brothers Band memorabilia from 1969–1976. Weston and Perkins discuss in detail the various categories and aspects of band collectibles from that period. The book not only highlights individual collectibles, but also explains where to find them and how to preserve them. Included are band instruments and equipment, t-shirts, apparel and merchandise, autographs, bookkeeping documents, passes, posters, tickets, programs, promotional items, vintage photographs, and more. Galadrielle Allman, daughter of the late Duane Allman, offers an introduction that is both intimate and informative. Fans of classic rock music and The Allman Brothers Band alike will find this book irresistible and prepublication interest from fans has been phenomenal.

This book chronicles—through the eyes of a range of visitors—the first quarter century of the development of Columbus, Georgia. A planned city located at the head of navigation on the Chattahoochee River, the city underwent a remarkably swift transformation from isolated frontier town to Deep South commercial hub between its founding in 1828 and the eve of the Civil War. Included is a driving tour of historic sites that will enable readers to appreciate the town’s robust antebellum architectural heritage and better understand the contours of life within the borders of the original city carved from the wilderness nearly two centuries ago.

The Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication was founded in 1915 by Steadman Vincent Sanford who as president (1932–35) and chancellor of the University System of Georgia (1935–45), was architect of the modern University of Georgia. Its second graduate John Eldridge Drewry (1922), the school’s longest serving director and dean (1932–69), established the Peabody Awards in 1940, which remains the oldest and most prestigious award in all electronic media. This account details the evolution of a college that is among the nation’s elite, with a selective undergraduate program (juniors and seniors only) and an impressive 99.1 percent graduation rate; a national leader in its graduate research program, with study abroad programs and internships; and leadership in international research and outreach. Housed within the college are a number of centers, institutes, and certificate programs that distinguish its disciplines.

A KILLING ON RING JAW BLUFF recounts the rise and fall of Georgia’s rural population as told through the story of Charles Graves Rawlings. His life followed that of cotton-based agriculture after the Civil War and along with it the rise and fall of Georgia’s small towns. From modest beginnings as a liveryman, he acquired nearly 40,000 acres of land, as well as a bank, a railroad, and diverse other businesses. By 1920, he was one of the state’s wealthier men, with a loving wife and family, and powerful political connections. Five years later he was facing a sentence of life in prison for his role in the alleged murder of his first cousin, Gus Tarbutton.