North Georgia has been found to contain some of the most advanced indigenous cultures north of Mexico. Very little of what one reads about its Native American history, whether on historic markers or tourist brochures, is accurate.

An archeologist reveals the mysterious world that disappeared under North Georgia’s man-made lakes in this fascinating history. North Georgia has more than forty lakes, and not one is natural. The state’s controversial decision to dam the region’s rivers for power and water supply changed the landscape forever. Lost communities, forgotten crossroads, dissolving racetracks and even entire towns disappeared, with remnants occasionally peeking up from the depths during times of extreme drought. The creation of Lake Lanier displaced more than seven hundred families. During the construction of Lake Chatuge, busloads of schoolboys were brought in to help disinter graves for the community’s cemetery relocation. Contractors clearing land for the development of Lake Hartwell met with seventy-eight-year-old Eliza Brock wielding a shotgun and warning the men off her property. Georgia historian and archeologist Lisa Russell dives into the history hidden beneath North Georgia’s lakes.

When the bustle of a city slows, towns dissolve into abandoned buildings or return to woods and crumble into the North Georgia clay. In 1832, Auraria was one of the sites of the original American gold rush. The remains of numerous towns dot the landscape - pockets of life that were lost to fire or drowned by the water of civic works projects. Cassville was a booming educational and cultural epicenter until 1864. Allatoona found its identity as a railroad town. Author and professor Lisa M. Russell unearths the forgotten towns of North Georgia.

The textile era was born of a perfect storm. When North Georgia's red clay failed farmers and prices fell during Reconstruction, opportunities arose. Beginning in the 1880s, textile industries moved south. Mill owners enticed an entire workforce to leave their farms and move their families into modern mill villages, encased communities with stores, theaters, baseball teams, bands and schools. To some workers, mill village life was idyllic. They had work, recreation, education, shopping and a home with the modern conveniences of running water and electricity. Most importantly, they got a paycheck. But after the New Deal, workers started to see the raw deal they were getting from mill owners and rebelled. Strikes and economic changes began to erode the era of mill villages, and by the 1960s, mill village life was all but gone. Author Lisa Russell brings these once-vibrant communities back to life.

The story of Georgia’s Indians from elephant hunts to the European invasion. Spanning 12,000 years, this scientifically accurate and very readable book guides readers through the prehistoric and historic archaeological evidence left by Georgia’s native peoples. It is the only comprehensive, up-to-date, and text-based overview of its kind in print. Drawing on an extensive body of archaeological and historical data, White traces Native American cultural development and accomplishment over the millennia preceding the establishment of Georgia as a colony and state. Each chapter opens with a vivid fictional vignette transporting the reader to a past culture and setting the scene for the narrative that follows. From hunting giant buffalo and elephants to attempts in the 1700s and 1800s to maintain tribal integrity in the face of European and Euro-American violence and threats, White takes the reader on an archaeologically based tour of the land that today is Georgia. Evidence from selected archaeological sites and projects is woven into the narrative, and insets supplement the main text to highlight informative passages from archaeological reports and historical documents. A generous number of photographs, maps, and illustrations aid the reader in identifying artifacts and testify to the artistic abilities of these indigenous peoples of Georgia.

DIVRecovers the history of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American reading societies./div

Much of what is known today of Georgia history was preserved through the diligent efforts of a single family. From Wormsloe, their ancestral plantation near Savannah, the De Rennes built an extraordinary collection of books and manuscripts on the history of the state and the Confederacy, much of which is now housed at the University of Georgia and the Museum of the Confederacy. This book focuses on their efforts in the years 1827 through 1970, conveying the passion and purpose with which they pursued their avocation. William Harris Bragg has mined a vast array of archival sources to present this engaging narrative of the De Renne family. He tells how wealthy bibliophile and philanthropist G. W. J. De Renne and his wife, Mary, set the precedent for the family’s accumulation of historic material, how their son established the Wymberley Jones De Renne Georgia Library that bears his name, and how his children in turn expanded upon that tradition. The De Rennes also printed limited editions of primary historical materials beginning with the series known as the Wormsloe Quartos. Bragg’s account of three generations of the De Renne family vividly records their achievements as it reconstructs their life at Wormsloe and follows them in their travels around the world. It provides glimpses into the dynamics and behavior of one of Georgia’s oldest and most prominent families and the evolution of the southern aristocracy. The book draws on newly available material to expand significantly on Ellis Merton Coulter’s 1955 work, Wormsloe, and provides the most complete account to date of the De Rennes. Beyond the story of the De Renne family, Bragg also reveals much about the history of collecting and of the antiquarian book trade, as well as of the evolution of Georgia historical documentation. Appendix material includes genealogical tables and lists of collections and publications, making De Renne: Three Generations of a Georgia Family an invaluable source for all scholars and aficionados of southern history.

For many the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a symbol of hope. In the eyes of its critics, however, Soviet authoritarianism and the horrors of the gulags have led to the revolution becoming synonymous with oppression, threatening to forever taint the very idea of socialism. The experience of Georgia, which declared its independence from Russia in 1918, tells a different story. In this riveting history, Eric Lee explores the little-known saga of the country’s experiment in democratic socialism, detailing the epic, turbulent events of this forgotten chapter in revolutionary history. Along the way, we are introduced to a remarkable cast of characters – among them the men and women who strove for a more inclusive vision of socialism that featured multi-party elections, freedom of speech and assembly, a free press and a civil society grounded in trade unions and cooperatives. Though the Georgian Democratic Republic lasted for just three years before it was brutally crushed on the orders of Stalin, it was able to offer, however briefly, a glimpse of a more humane alternative to the Soviet reality that was to come.

Most Americans think of the Civil War as a series of dramatic clashes between massive armies led by romantic-seeming leaders. But in the Appalachian communities of North Georgia, things were very different. Focusing on Fannin and Lumpkin counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains along Georgia’s northern border, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South argues for a more localized, idiosyncratic understanding of this momentous period in our nation’s history. The book reveals that, for many participants, this war was fought less for abstract ideological causes than for reasons tied to home, family, friends, and community. Making use of a large trove of letters, diaries, interviews, government documents, and sociological data, Jonathan Dean Sarris brings to life a previously obscured version of our nation’s most divisive and destructive war. From the outset, the prospect of secession and war divided Georgia’s mountain communities along the lines of race and religion, and war itself only heightened these tensions. As the Confederate government began to draft men into the army and seize supplies from farmers, many mountaineers became more disaffected still. They banded together in armed squads, fighting off Confederate soldiers, state militia, and their own pro-Confederate neighbors. A local civil war ensued, with each side seeing the other as a threat to law, order, and community itself. In this very personal conflict, both factions came to dehumanize their enemies and use methods that shocked even seasoned soldiers with their savagery. But when the war was over in 1865, each faction sought to sanitize the past and integrate its stories into the national myths later popularized about the Civil War. By arguing that the reason for choosing sides had more to do with local concerns than with competing ideologies or social or political visions, Sarris adds a much-needed complication to the question of why men fought in the Civil War.

A sweeping saga of the Spanish history and influence in North America over five centuries, from the acclaimed author of Empire’s Crossroads. Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots?ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today. El Norte chronicles the dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present?from Ponce de Leon’s initial landing in Florida in 1513 to Spanish control of the vast Louisiana territory in 1762 to the Mexican-American War in 1846 and up to the more recent tragedy of post-hurricane Puerto Rico and the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico. Interwoven in this narrative of events and people are cultural issues that have been there from the start but which are unresolved to this day: language, belonging, community, race, and nationality. Seeing them play out over centuries provides vital perspective at a time when it is urgently needed. In 1883, Walt Whitman meditated on his country’s Spanish past: “We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them,” predicting that “to that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts.” That future is here, and El Norte, a stirring and eventful history in its own right, will make a powerful impact on our national understanding. “This history debunks the myth of American exceptionalism by revisiting a past that is not British and Protestant but Hispanic and Catholic. Gibson begins with the arrival of Spaniards in La Florida, in 1513, discusses Mexico’s ceding of territory to the U.S., in 1848, and concludes with Trump’s nativist fixations. Along the way, she explains how California came to be named after a fictional island in a book by a Castilian Renaissance writer and asks why we ignore a chapter of our history that began long before the Pilgrims arrived. At a time when the building of walls occupies so much attention, Gibson makes a case for the blurring of boundaries.” —New Yorker “A sweeping and accessible survey of the Hispanic history of the U.S. that illuminates the integral impact of the Spanish and their descendants on the U.S.’s social and cultural development. . . . This unusual and insightful work provides a welcome and thought-provoking angle on the country’s history, and should be widely appreciated.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review, PW Pick