The Southern Democrat was established by Forney G. Stephens at Blountsville in 1894. After fellow newspaperman Lawrence H. Mathews of the Blount County News-Dispatch died in 1896, Stephens moved the Democrat to Oneonta. When the News-Dispatch folded in 1903, the Democrat was the preeminent Blount County newspaper. Stephens died in 1939, but the Democrat continued to publish in Oneonta for almost 100 years. In 1989 the old Southern Democrat was renamed the Blount Countain. Microfilm for the old Southern Democrat was acquired from the State Archives in Montgomery and studied page by page. Every mention of births, marriages, deaths, obituaries and news important to the history and development of Blount County was reproduced here. This book is vital for any serious student of Blount County, Alabama genealogy and history.

At the time of the Civil War, Cullman County did not exist. It was carved mostly from the East side of Winston and the West side of Blount in 1877. This book attempts to identify all of the Confederate soldiers originating from the area which became Cullman County, as well as those who migrated to the county after the War. The book also contains rare first person accounts of the war as told by Cullman County residents George Martin Holcombe and Elijah Wilson Harper and printed in the Cullman Alabama Tribune. This book is important to the genealogy and history of Cullman County and contains much previously unpublished information on the old soldiers. It contains service records, pension applications, births, deaths, marriages, and obituaries.

Amazing Alabama: A Potpourri of Fascinating Facts, Tall Tales and Storied Stories chronicles a brief history of the state, famous personages associated with Alabama, a discussion of state firsts, unique occurrences, antiquated laws and other fascinating topics.

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A Southern Independent Booksellers Association “Spring Pick” This harrowing portrait of the Jim Crow South “proves how much we do not yet know about our history” (New York Times Book Review). Caliph Washington didn’t pull the trigger but, as Officer James "Cowboy" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington was black, and this was the Jim Crow South. Widely lauded for its searing “insight into a history of America that can no longer be left unknown” (Washington Post), He Calls Me by Lightning is an “absorbing chronicle” (Ira Katznelson) of the forgotten life of Caliph Washington that becomes an historic portrait of racial injustice in the civil rights era. Washington, a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, was wrongfully convicted of killing a white Alabama policeman in 1957 and sentenced to death. Through “meticulous research and vivid prose” (Patrick Phillips), S. Jonathan Bass reveals Washington’s Kafkaesque legal odyssey: he came within minutes of the electric chair nearly a dozen times and had his conviction overturned three times before finally being released in 1972. Devastating and essential, He Calls Me by Lightning demands that we take into account the thousands of lives cast away by the systemic racism of a “social order apparently unchanged even today” (David Levering Lewis).

Traces how the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction transformed from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one.

The Southern Democrat was established by Forney G. Stephens at Blountsville in 1894. After fellow newspaperman Lawrence H. Mathews of the Blount County News-Dispatch died in 1896, Stephens moved the Democrat to Oneonta. When the News-Dispatch folded in 1903, the Democrat was the preeminent Blount County newspaper. Stephens died in 1939, but the Democrat continued to publish in Oneonta for almost 100 years. In 1989 the old Southern Democrat was renamed the Blount Countain. Microfilm for the old Southern Democrat was acquired from the State Archives in Montgomery and studied page by page. Every mention of births, marriages, deaths, obituaries and news important to the history and development of Blount County was reproduced here. This book is vital for any serious student of Blount County, Alabama genealogy and history.

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing “sacramental” wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American writer.

Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.