Even forty years after the civil rights movement, the transition from son and grandson of Klansmen to field secretary of SNCC seems quite a journey. In the early 1960s, when Bob Zellner’s professors and classmates at a small church school in Alabama thought he was crazy for even wanting to do research on civil rights, it was nothing short of remarkable. Now, in his long-awaited memoir, Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern “way of life” he had been raised on but rejected. Decades later, he is still protesting on behalf of social change and equal rights. Fortunately, he took the time, with co-author Constance Curry, to write down his memories and reflections. He was in all the campaigns and was close to all the major figures. He was beaten, arrested, and reviled by some but admired and revered by others. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, winner of the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award, is Bob Zellner’s larger-than-life story, and it was worth waiting for.

Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost. Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him. As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble. And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

They stand as unselfconscious as if the photograph were being taken at a church picnic and not during one of the pitched battles of the civil rights struggle. None of them knows that the image will appear in Life magazine or that it will become an icon of its era. The year is 1962, and these seven white Mississippi lawmen have gathered to stop James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi. One of them is swinging a billy club. More than thirty years later, award-winning journalist and author Paul Hendrickson sets out to discover who these men were, what happened to them after the photograph was taken, and how racist attitudes shaped the way they lived their lives. But his ultimate focus is on their children and grandchildren, and how the prejudice bequeathed by the fathers was transformed, or remained untouched, in the sons. Sons of Mississippi is a scalding yet redemptive work of social history, a book of eloquence and subtlely that tracks the movement of racism across three generations and bears witness to its ravages among both black and white Americans.

Publisher description

The period following Mexico's war with the United States in 1847 was characterized by violent conflicts, as liberal and conservative factions battled for control of the national government. The civil strife was particularly bloody in south central Mexico, including the southern state of Oaxaca. In Sons of the Sierra, Patrick McNamara explores events in the Oaxaca district of Ixtlan, where Zapotec Indians supported the liberal cause and sought to exercise influence over statewide and national politics. Two Mexican presidents had direct ties to Ixtlan district: Benito Juarez, who served as Mexico's liberal president from 1858 to 1872, was born in the district, and Porfirio Diaz, president from 1876 to 1911, had led a National Guard battalion made up of Zapotec soldiers throughout the years of civil war. Paying close attention to the Zapotec people as they achieved greater influence, McNamara examines the political culture of Diaz's presidency and explores how Diaz, who became increasingly dictatorial over the course of his time in office, managed to stay in power for thirty-five years. McNamara reveals the weight of memory and storytelling as Ixtlan veterans and their families reminded government officials of their ties to both Juarez and Diaz. While Juarez remained a hero in their minds, Diaz came to represent the arrogance of Mexico City and the illegitimacy of the "Porfiriato" that ended with the 1910 revolution.

Ufrieda Ho’s compelling memoir describes with intimate detail what it was like to come of age in the marginalized Chinese community of Johannesburg during the apartheid era of the 1970s and 1980s. The Chinese were mostly ignored, as Ho describes it, relegated to certain neighborhoods and certain jobs, living in a kind of gray zone between the blacks and the whites. As long as they adhered to these rules, they were left alone. Ho describes the separate journeys her parents took before they knew one another, each leaving China and Hong Kong around the early 1960s, arriving in South Africa as illegal immigrants. Her father eventually became a so-called “fahfee man,” running a small-time numbers game in the black townships, one of the few opportunities available to him at that time. In loving detail, Ho describes her father’s work habits: the often mysterious selection of numbers at the kitchen table, the carefully-kept account ledgers, and especially the daily drives into the townships, where he conducted business on street corners from the seat of his car. Sometimes Ufrieda accompanied him on these township visits, offering her an illuminating perspective into a stratified society. Poignantly, it was on such a visit that her father—who is very much a central figure in Ho’s memoir—met with a tragic end. In many ways, life for the Chinese in South Africa was self-contained. Working hard, minding the rules, and avoiding confrontations, they were able to follow traditional Chinese ways. But for Ufrieda, who was born in South Africa, influences from the surrounding culture crept into her life, as did a political awakening. Paper Sons and Daughters is a wonderfully told family history that will resonate with anyone having an interest in the experiences of Chinese immigrants, or perhaps any immigrants, the world over.

1862: The Union holds Baltimore, but this city, with its southern attitudes and divided sentiments, is a port of enormous potential value to the Confederate cause. Defending Baltimore is a man disdainfully called the "Black German." Branden Rolfe, a European revolutionary, fled the oppression of his home in Austria and now serves freedom as the city's Union Provost Marshal. When Rolfe learns of the Sons of Liberty, a secret group of secessionists determined to capture Baltimore, he fears their success could alter the course of the conflict. The war has already separated him from his adopted children and the woman he has learned to love. Now, the threat of the Sons, led by the clever, dedicated Langdon Everett, becomes a thorn in his side as the group gains supporters and amasses a considerable cache of weaponry and explosives. Rolfe feels official pressure and a personal need to stop them at all costs, even to the point of risking the life of his love, who volunteers for dangerous duty undercover. . . Eden Farnswood comes to the Sons through her new friend, Holly DeMornay, the cousin of their leader. Appalled by the terrible human cost of war, young Mrs. Farswood is a widow who set out to become a nurse but has found a new mission in the Sons of Liberty. Torn by bitter memories and divided loyalties, Eden finds it too painful . . . and too dangerous . . . to share her secrets with anyone, not even Holly, her closest friend. As Rolfe's web of spies closes in on the Sons of Liberty and Langdon Everett, the fates of Baltimore and of Eden Farnswood hang in the balance. In Baltimore, where North and South meet, love and war conspire so that, win or lose, there will be a terrible cost either in lives or by the betrayal of the human heart.

Two aging Civil War veterans mourned the death of their sons at a joint funeral in Knoxville National Cemetery. One, a cavalry general, had fought for the Union. The other had served as surgeon/major of a Confederate cavalry regiment. They met for the first time at the graves of their sons--two army lieutenants and University of Tennessee graduates killed together in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Newspaper accounts presented the encounter as an example of reconciliation between North and South. This book recounts the meeting of two families from opposing sides of the war--both rooted in East Tennessee, a region harshly divided by the conflict--placing their story in the context of America's reconciliation narrative at the end of the 19th century.

W. Eric Emerson traces the wartime experiences of the Charleston Light Dragoons--a unique Confederate cavalry company drawn together from South Carolina's most prestigious families of planters, merchants, and politicos--and examines the military exploits of this "company of gentlemen" to find that the elite status of its membership dictated the terms of service