Results by title
297 books match the query 'Alabama' and 14 start with m
Major Robert Farmar of Mobile
Robert R. Rea
University of Alabama Press, 1990
"An engaging biography [and] a colorful tale. . . . Robert Farmar, a son of New Jersey, used his position among that colony's elite to secure a commission as a captain in the British Army during the War of Jenkins' Ear and King George's War, serving in the unsuccessful assaults at Cartegena, Cuba, and Panama and then in the disaster at Fontenoy in Flanders and in the reversals at Rocoux and Laffeldt. . . . During the Seven Years' War he participated in the capture of Havana.
Malicious Intent
Murder and the Perpetuation of Jim Crow Health CareDavid Barton Smith
Vanderbilt University Press, 2023
Race-related disparities in American death rates, exacerbated once again by the COVID-19 pandemic, have persisted since the birth of the modern US medical system a century ago. A unique but perpetually unequal history has prevented the United States from providing the kind of health care assurances that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations. The underlying story is one of political, medical, and bureaucratic machinations, all motivated by a deliberate Jim Crow systemic design. In Malicious Intent, David Barton Smith traces the Jean Cowsert story and the cold case of her death as a through line to explain the construction and fulfillment of an unequal health care system that would rather sacrifice many than provide for Black Americans.
Cowsert’s suspicious death came at a key moment in the struggle for universal health care in the wealthiest country on earth. Malicious Intent is a history of those failed efforts and a story of selective amnesia about one doctor’s death and the movement she fought for.
Mammals of Alabama
Troy L. Best and Julian L. Dusi
University of Alabama Press, 2014
Beautifully designed and sturdily bound for rugged field use, Mammals of Alabama is the first and only exhaustive guidebook to Alabama’s diverse and fascinating mammalian fauna.
European and American naturalists visited the territory that would become Alabama as early as the late eighteenth century and marveled at the breadth and variety of its flora and fauna. Yet until today scientists, scholars, and nature enthusiasts had no systematic guide to the state’s mammals. Mammals of Alabama fills the gap.
Naturally occurring in the state are nine orders, twenty-two families, fifty-one genera, and seventy-two species of living mammals. Best and Dusi offer an engaging entry for each as well as additional species that have become extinct through natural processes or human extirpation.
Illustrated with maps and photos, each entry includes:
• Identification notes • Dental formula
• Size and weight • Distribution
• Ecology • Life History
• Behavior • Parasites and Diseases
• Conservation Status • Notes and References
Ideal for backyards, hikes, libraries, and classrooms, Mammals of Alabama includes hundreds of professional, close-up color specimen photographs of both living animals in their natural habitats and skull plates, making identification of animals easy.
Best also offers fascinating and fun facts about Alabama mammals that will delight nature lovers of all ages, such as the surprising and excellent tree-climbing skills of the gray fox, the use in the past of mole skins to apply cosmetics, and the litters of identical quadruplets common to the nine-banded armadillo.
Published in cooperation with the Alabama Wildlife Federation
Materia Medica
Black Women, White Doctors, and Spectacular GynecologyNicole N. Ivy
Duke University Press, 2026
McIntosh and Weatherford
Creek Indian LeadersBenjamin W. Griffith
University of Alabama Press, 1998
The human story behind the Creek War and the coming of Indian Removal.
About the time of the American Revolutionary war, when the Creek Indians owned land that is today approximately the lower two-thirds of Alabama and of Georgia west of the Oconee River, two sons were born to Indian mothers and Scots fathers in obscure towns in the territory of the Creek Nation. Both sons were named William, and both were to become leaders of their mothers’ people.
The two remarkable men lived during a period of war and turbulence along the frontier in Alabama and Georgia. More often the subjects of folk tale and legend than serious historical inquiry, McIntosh and Weatherford fought on opposing sides in the Creek War of 1813-1814. McIntosh allied himself with Andrew Jackson and the friendly Lower Creeks, while Weatherford joined with the hostile Red Stick and was the leader of a band of Upper Creeks in the massacre at Fort Mims. McIntosh, who was given the rank of brigadier general for his military feats, was involved in the machinations that led to the ceding of Creek lands to Georgia. As a result, he died in disgrace at the hands of his fellow Creeks. Weatherford, once hated and feared, died a planter and local hero in Alabama near the site of Fort Mims.
Montgomery in the Good War
Portrait of a Southern City, 1939-1946Wesley Phillips Newton
University of Alabama Press, 2000
One city. One war. A story of transformation at home and abroad.
Using newspaper accounts, interviews, letters, journals, and his own memory of the time, Wesley Newton reconstructs wartime-era Montgomery, Alabama--a sleepy southern capital that was transformed irreversibly during World War II.
The war affected every segment of Montgomery society: black and white, rich and poor, male and female, those who fought in Europe and the Pacific and those who stayed on the home front. Newton follows Montgomerians chronologically through the war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima as they experience patriotism, draft and enlistment, rationing, scarcity drives, and the deaths of loved ones. His use of small vignettes based on personal recollections adds drama and poignancy to the story.
Montgomery in the Good War is an important reminder that wars are waged at home as well as abroad and that their impact reverberates well beyond those who fight on the front lines. Those who came of age during the war will recognize themselves in this moving volume. It will also be enlightening to those who have lived in times of relative peace.
More than a Game
The Best of Alf Van HooseAlf Van Hoose
University of Alabama Press, 2009
Although he spent 43 years at the same job, Alf Van Hoose was not a man limited by the boundaries of his profession. As Birmingham News sports editor for 21 years and a columnist for a decade before that, Van Hoose helped define a city, a state, and a region largely known for sports. He was the writer of record for some of the biggest sporting events and personalities in the state of Alabama in the last half of the 20th Century. Wayne Hester, Van Hoose's successor as sports editor of The News, in 1990, said, "To many sports fans over the years, Alf Van Hoose has been The Birmingham News." But he was also much more than the "sports guy," as older generations of Alabama sports fans who read this book will remember and younger ones will learn. He was a man for all seasons, not just those where balls get kicked, hit, or thrown around.
A native of Cuba, Alabama, and a veteran of the Third Army campaigns in WWII (where he won both the Bronze and Silver Stars), Van Hoose became a sportswriter on The News in 1947. He remained in that role until retirement in 1990, with only short breaks to serve as a Vietnam war correspondent, and to reflect on the lessons learned while serving with George Patton. Van Hoose died in 1997 at the age of 76.
This volume contains 90 of Van Hoose's best columns, selected not only to showcase his characteristic style, but also because of the enduring importance and interest of the topics--football and baseball, of course, but also golf, high school heroics, auto racing, and Van Hoose's special favorites: Rickwood Field and its various tenants, especially the Birmingham Black Barons.
Published with the College of Communication and Information Science, The University of Alabama.
Motorcycling Alabama
50 Ride Loops through the Heart of DixieDavid Haynes
University of Alabama Press, 2011
A much-needed guidebook for one of the most beautiful states to explore on two wheels.
David Haynes offers fifty ride loops of between 75 and 150 miles in length throughout every region of the state. The start and stop points for each ride are identical and easy to locate. This handy guide, which is designed to fit in a tank bag, features both streetbike and dual-sport rides. Also included are detailed, color-coded maps of the routes and turn-by-turn directions. Stunning full-color photographs accompany each ride description, highlighting scenes and points of interest along the way. There are introductory chapters on motorcycle safety, gear, and the use of global positioning devices, as well as pointers on motorcycle camping.
Motorcycle touring is one of the fastest-growing outdoor recreational pursuits in the country. For both the in-state and out-of-state motorcycle enthusiast, Motorcycling Alabama is a valuable and complete guide to a state rich in diverse types of scenery and with many unsung treasures yet to be discovered.
Published in cooperation with the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, Birmingham.
Mound Excavations at Moundville
Architecture, Elites and Social OrderVernon James Knight, Jr.
University of Alabama Press, 2010
How social and political power was wielded in order to build Moundville
Moundville
John H. Blitz
University of Alabama Press, 2008
Exploring the legacy of America’s great mound builders.
In the 13th century, Moundville was one of the largest Native American settlements north of Mexico. Spread over 325 acres were 29 earthen mounds arranged around a great plaza, a mile-long stockade, and dozens of dwellings for thousands of people. Moundville, in size and complexity second only to the Cahokia site in Illinois, was a heavily populated town, as well as a political and religious center.
Moundville was sustained by tribute of food and labor provided by the people who lived in the nearby floodplain as well as other smaller mound centers. The immediate area appears to have been thickly populated, but by about A.D. 1350, Moundville retained only ceremonial and political functions. A decline ensued, and by the 1500s the area was abandoned. By the time the first Europeans reached the Southeast in the 1540s, the precise links between Moundville's inhabitants and what became the historic Native American tribes had become a mystery.
Illustrated with 50 color photos, maps, and figures, Moundville tells the story of the ancient people who lived there, the modern struggle to save the site from destruction, and the scientific saga of the archaeologists who brought the story to life. Moundville is the book to read before, during, or after a visit to Alabama’s prehistoric metropolis.
Moundville's Economy
Paul D. Welch
University of Alabama Press, 1991
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
Anthropologists have long talked about chiefdoms as a form of sociopolitical organization, and for several decades Elman Service's description of chiefdoms has been widely accepted as definitive. Nevertheless, in the 1970s, scholars began to question whether all, or any, chiefdoms had the entire range of characteristics described by Service. Most of the questions focused on the (nonmarket) economic organization of these polities, and several contrasting economic models were suggested. None of the models, however, was comprehensively tested against actual chiefdom economies.
This study examines the economic organization of the late prehistoric (A.D. 1000 to 1540) chiefdom centered at Moundville, Alabama. Rather than attempting to show that this case fits one or another model, the economic organization is determined empirically using archaeological data. The pattern of production and distribution of subsistence goods, domestic nonutilitarian goods, and imported prestige goods does not fit precisely any of the extant models. Because Moundville's economy was organized in a way that promoted stability, it may be no accident that Moundville was the dominant regional polity for several hundred years. This research opens a new field of archaeological investigation: the relationship between fine details of economic organization and large-scale political fortunes.
Murder on Shades Mountain
The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow BirminghamMelanie S. Morrison
Duke University Press, 2018
In Murder on Shades Mountain Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.
Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States
A Field Guide to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and FloridaBy Alan E. Bessette, Arleen F. Bessette, and David P. Lewis
University of Texas Press, 2019
The weather patterns and topography of America's Gulf Coast create favorable growing conditions for thousands of species of mushrooms, but the complete region has generally gone uncharted when it comes to mycology. Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States at last delivers an in-depth, high-quality, user-friendly field guide, featuring more than 1,000 common and lesser-known species—some of which are being illustrated in color for the first time.
Using easily identifiable characteristics and a color key, the authors enable anyone, whether amateur mushroom hunter or professional mycologist, to discern and learn about the numerous species of mushrooms encountered in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Wild-food enthusiasts will appreciate the information on edibility or toxicity that accompanies each description, and they will also find the book’s detailed instructions for collecting, cleaning, testing, preserving, and cooking wild mushrooms to be of great interest. Providing encyclopedic knowledge in a handy format that fits in a backpack, Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States is a must-have for any mushroom lover.
Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals
Christopher M. Reali
University of Illinois Press, 2022
The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination.
Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals reveals the people, place, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history.