Product Code: P522
ISBN: 9780881465525
Price: $16.00
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.
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Product Code: P511
ISBN: 9780881465532
Price: $16.00
In spring 1962, a young black girl named Etta Hemsley is killed at a civil rights demonstration on a university campus in Atlanta. The next day, the home of Jovita Curry, a black woman in Overton, Georgia, is burned.
Both events are etched into the memory of Cole Bishop and eerily play out the predictions of a former classmate named Marie Fitzpatrick. Both Cole and Marie are high school seniors when they first meet in fall 1954. Cole, like his classmates, is a native-born Southerner influenced by the traditions of segregation as a way of life. Marie is a recent transplant from Washington, DC, a brilliant and assertive nonconformist with bold predictions about a new world that is about to be ushered in by the force of desegregation. Included in her prophecy is a warning for Cole that will cause him to leave the South to live and teach in Vermont. The odd friendship between the two of them continues after high school in a series of tender and revealing letters.
THE BOOK OF MARIE is the story of a generation—whites and blacks—who ignited the war of change. Yet, it is also as much about the power of place— the finding of home—as it is about the history of events.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P526
ISBN: 9780881465655
Price: $18.00
Novelist Raymond L. Atkins offers a lighthearted change of pace in this collection of humorous essays. He explores a diverse range of topics as seen from the porch of his home on the southern bank of the mighty Etowah River in northern Georgia.
From this lofty height he holds forth on holidays, parenthood, cars, home ownership, aging, travel, medicine, technology, ballet, movies, marriage, Shakespeare, dogs, cats, music, swimming pools, vintage television, nicknames, amusement parks, restaurants, school projects, language, computers, hair, bad jobs, William Faulkner, weddings, advertising, Broadway plays, yard work, hospitals, cooking, Elvis Presley, moving, money, art, college, dinner theater, and a variety of other subjects.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H912
ISBN: 9780881465624
Price: $35.00
John Fletcher Hanson was a rare combination of industrialist, journalist, and orator who spent most of his life in Macon, Georgia, rising from the ashes of the Civil War to become the leading voice of the New South. Many have assigned that role to Henry Grady, but while Grady was talking about a New South, Hanson was building one, by creating jobs, promoting Southern industrialization, and advancing educational opportunities.
Georgia’s post–Civil War history cannot be fully understood without examining the life of J. F. Hanson, its most important New South advocate and industrialist. In bringing this remarkable man and his accomplishments to light for the first time, CRACKING THE SOLID SOUTH paints an absorbing picture of the economic, political, and social struggles that confronted Georgia after the Civil War and of the many ways one man shaped the course of the state’s history.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P527
ISBN: 9780881465679
Price: $20.00
In her second book of essays, Kathy Bradley continues her examination of the natural world as a prism through which to understand the human experience. With her family farm in the coastal plains of South Georgia serving as the anchor, Bradley uses her observations of animal life, agriculture, and the seasons to create what others have called parables, but what she calls “a map key or decoder ring” for some of the dilemmas of twenty-first-century life.
The chronological stories, four years’ worth of tales that began life as newspaper columns, are inhabited by wild and unpredictable animals, civilized and unpredictable people, moons and cornfields, tides and floods and droughts—each described in sensory detail, each a metaphor rich in meaning. Bradley invites readers along on her wanderings in order that they might find their own meaning in the recounting of commonplace events and the lives of ordinary people.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H916
ISBN: 9780881465747
Price: $29.00
The story of the first airplane flight in Georgia has not been told correctly in more than one hundred years. The year given for this flight, 1907, is not correct, the plane identified as the first to fly never got off the ground, and Ben T. Epps, Sr. is incorrectly credited, solely, with achieving this feat. TO LASSO THE CLOUDS sets the historical record straight and brings to light the complete, incredible story of the two young men from Athens, Georgia who achieved their dream of flight. Epps and Zumpt A. Huff were described by one newspaper after that first flight as a “second pair of Wright brothers.”
Most surprising of all, this book reveals their flight was the first flight of a monoplane in the United States—a record of which even they were not aware.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P531
ISBN: 9780881465754
Price: $17.00
SIDETRACKED is a series of stories which chronicle the zigzag adventures of two authors searching for a better understanding of their state. Milam Propst and Jaclyn White are good friends who enjoy the creative process, love to chat, dine, and explore out-of-the-way places.
Their initial plan was to trace Sherman’s March to the Sea and visit some of Georgia’s 3,000 plus historic markers along the way. While the journey would not necessarily spotlight the Civil War, Sherman’s path would provide them with a specific route.
There was one slight disadvantage to the plan. Neither of the writers have any sense of direction. Because of this, they got sidetracked often, made countless U-turns, and frequently found fascinating stories by accident.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H920
ISBN: 9780881465860
Price: $35.00
In 1975, Jimmy Carter announced he would run for President. Under the new Federal Election Laws only $21.8 million would be provided for the General Election Campaign. A trivial amount compared to future campaigns.
An army of loyal supporters, friends, neighbors, and elected officials, known as the Peanut Brigade, joined the campaign. They traveled across the country, joining Jimmy and Rosalynn, knocking on doors, standing at factory gates, walking streets, asking voters to vote for Jimmy Carter for President. In 1976, Carter was elected the 39th President of the United States and served one term.
While the basics of his story are well known, they have never been told from the perspective of a “soldier” in the Peanut Brigade. Dorothy “Dot” Padgett, with an earthy, honest, and Southern voice, tells the story as if new to all of us. Humor and insight abound in this direct telling of how a peanut farmer from Georgia became President and leader of the United States. The secret is in his character, his morality, and in his being truly human.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H921
ISBN: 9780881465877
Price: $29.00
ANDREW YOUNG AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ATLANTA tells the story of the decisions that shaped Atlanta’s growth from a small, provincial Deep South city to an international metropolis impacting and influencing global affairs. When Mayor William Hartsfield coined the term “City too Busy to Hate” in the 1950s, who would have imagined that within fifty years Atlanta would have the world’s busiest airport, rank as the eighth largest metropolitan area in the United States or, that this once racially-segregated city would host the Centennial Olympic Games and play host to the world in 1996?
Atlanta provides a unique case study for an alternative vision of the relationships among leaders in corporations, government, and communities. The book tracks the development of the Atlanta Way, a strategy for economic development that features cross-racial cooperation—from the foundation in Reconstruction era Atlanta to the Olympic Games.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P537
ISBN: 9780881465938
Price: $19.00
What is the purpose of public education? Writing from his experience as a father, small business owner, and policymaker, Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle presents a comprehensive vision to transform the way that public schools educate our students. Beginning with an idea which unites all Americans—that public education establishes the foundational promise of opportunity for all individuals by empowering us with the ability to learn, develop, and obtain anything we are willing to work for—Cagle makes the case for reforming our schools and rethinking the premise behind how we set and measure goals for student achievement. This is truly the challenge of a generation.
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By author: Susie Gardner Illustrated by: Tina Mullen
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: H924
ISBN: 9780881465907
Price: $16.00
Zoey has always been the star of the team. She believes she can win games all by herself. But when a new coach arrives, Zoey must learn that it takes more than one player to make a team.
This read-aloud book follows one young athlete as she learns how much better it is when all players work together. 1, 2, 3 TEAM! will have your listeners yelling “TEAM” in unison before the final page.
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Publisher: Mercer University Press
Product Code: P534
ISBN: 9780881465785
Price: $24.00
CAPRICORN RISING: CONVERSATIONS IN SOUTHERN ROCK is a collection of interviews with many of the stars, producers, and associates of the 1970s Southern record label, Capricorn, which was founded in the heart of Macon, Georgia in 1969.
Author Michael Buffalo Smith collects word for word, the complete interviews with Capricorn artists including Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, George McCorkle, Bonnie Bramlett, Paul Hornsby, Johnny Sandlin, Chuck Leavell, and many others, providing a glimpse into the early 70s when Southern Rock was born in Macon.
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