AWF is pleased to post Books in Brief, a compendium of titles recently received in the office. Full-length reviews will often be forthcoming, but we hope BIB provides a quick peek at new works in time for your next bookstore or library visit. So many good things to share!
University of Georgia Press; 2023
In Bringing Home the White House, Auburn professor Melissa Estes Blair introduces us to five fascinating yet largely unheralded women at the heart of campaigns to elect and reelect some of our most beloved presidents. By examining the roles of these political strategists in affecting the outcome of presidential elections, Blair sheds light on their historical importance and the relevance of their individual influence.
Dear Denise: Letters to the Sister I Never Knew
By Lisa McNair
University of Alabama Press; 2022
Lisa McNair was born in 1964, one year after her older sister, Denise, was murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Dear Denise is a collection of forty letters from Lisa addressed to the sister she never knew. These letters offer an intimate look into the life of a family touched by one of the most heinous tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement.
Dixie Heretic: The Civil Rights Odyssey of Renwick C. Kennedy
By Tennant McWilliams
University of Alabama Press; 2023
Drawn from letters, daily-diary writings, and extensive interviews, Dixie Heretic: The Civil Rights Odyssey of Renwick C. Kennedy offers a life-and-times biography of the Alabama Black Belt minister, Renwick C. Kennedy (1900-1985). Tennant McWilliams, former dean and professor emeritus at University of Alabama at Birmingham, gives an unvarnished account of Kennedy’s tortuous efforts to make his congregants and other southern whites “better Christians.”
Everyone’s Gone to the Moon: July 1969, Life on Earth, and the Epic Voyage of Apollo 11
By Joe Cuhaj
Rowman and Little Field Publishers, Inc.; 2023
Mobile resident Joe Cuhaj’s Everyone’s Gone to the Moon is a week-by-week journey through July 1969, one of the most pivotal months in human history. This deep dive into the Apollo 11 mission’s most crucial weeks and events occurring simultaneously back on Earth gives a vivid new perspective to the month that launched humanity into the future.
Faith. Virtue. Wisdom: A History of Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, 1873-2023
By Foster Dickson
Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School; 2023
Montgomery Catholic commissioned author Foster Dickson to write a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Montgomery’s longest-standing and continuously operated school. Faith. Virtue, Wisdom follows the evolution of the school from its 1873 founding by the Sisters of Loretto to the present day.
It’s a Southern Thing: Life’s Different Here, Y’all
By Kelly Kazek
Alabama Media Group; 2023
In this book of essays written for her column, “It’s a Southern Thing,” Huntsville-based humorist Kelly Kazek evokes the beauty and quirky character of the South that raised her.
Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work
By Delores Phillips, with Delia Steverson (Editor), Linda Miller (Foreword), Trudier Harris (Afterword), Delia Steverson (Introduction)
University of Georgia Press; 2023
Stumbling Blocks expands and contextualizes the unpublished works of the late Georgia-born African American writer Delores Phillips, best known for her 2004 novel The Darkest Child. This volume, edited by University of Alabama professor Delia Steverson with an afterword by scholar and Alabama Writers Hall of Fame inductee Trudier Harris, illuminates and expands the legacy of an underrepresented writer who is uniquely situated at the intersections of multiple identities including race, gender, disability, and region.
The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper
By Elizabeth Woolsey
Horse Doctor Press; 4 volumes
Author Elizabeth Woolsey, a graduate of Auburn University, practiced equine veterinary medicine in Australia for over three decades. In the four-volume “Rebecca Harper” series, Woolsey documents the time-traveling adventures of “horse doctor” Rebecca Harper, evoking historical personages and tropes of the American West.
