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Rediscover the spirit, stories, and landscapes of Alabama through a timeless collection of observations and historical reflections.

In Sketches of Alabama, Mary Duffee offers a richly detailed portrait of a state shaped by diverse communities, enduring traditions, and a deeply rooted cultural identity. Through a series of engaging sketches, Duffee captures the essence of Alabama’s towns, people, and everyday life, preserving moments that might otherwise be lost to time.

Blending historical insight with narrative charm, this collection explores the character of Alabama from multiple perspectives—rural and urban, past and present. Readers encounter vivid depictions of local customs, notable figures, and the evolving social fabric of the region. Duffee’s work not only chronicles the state’s development but also reflects the broader story of the American South, illuminating its complexities, resilience, and sense of place.

This collection contains typescripts of some of Mary Gordon Duffee's Iron Age columns "Sketches of Alabama," manuscripts of seven of Duffee's poems, a typed biographical sketch of Duffee, undated, and Duffee's obituary from the Birmingham Age-Herald. Ideal for students, historians, and general readers alike, Sketches of Alabama serves as both a literary work and a cultural record. Its accessible style makes it an excellent introduction to Alabama’s heritage, while its thoughtful observations reward those seeking deeper understanding of Southern history and identity.

Whether you are drawn to regional storytelling, historical narrative, or the rich traditions of the Deep South, this work offers a compelling journey into Alabama’s past—one sketch at a time.

The third book in Charles Bowden’s “accidental trilogy” that began with Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing attempts to resolve the overarching question: “How can a person live a moral life in a culture of death?” As humanity moves further into the twenty-first century, Bowden continues to interrogate our roles in creating the ravaged landscapes and accumulated death that still surround us, as well as his own childhood isolation, his lust for alcohol and women, and his waning hope for a future. We witness post-Katrina New Orleans and terrorist-bombed Bali; we encounter our shared actions with the animal world and the desirous need for consumption; we see the clash and erosion of our physical and figurative borders, the savagery of our own civilization. A man of his time and out of time, Bowden seeks acceptance and a will to endure what may lie ahead.

A timeless journey into the heart and folklore of Alabama.

Stars Fell on Alabama is a landmark work of Southern literature that transports readers to Alabama during the early 20th century. Written by Carl Carmer, this evocative narrative blends memoir, travel writing, and folklore to paint a rich portrait of a region steeped in tradition and complexity. Carmer captures the rhythms of rural life, the haunting beauty of the landscape, and the voices of its people—farmers, musicians, storytellers—whose tales reveal the cultural fabric of the Deep South. From ghost stories and folk songs to accounts of social customs and racial tensions, this book offers an unflinching yet affectionate look at Alabama’s heritage. Both a historical document and a literary masterpiece, Stars Fell on Alabama remains essential reading for anyone interested in Southern history, American folklore, and the enduring power of storytelling.

Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the Danube. The Danube route integrated the two principalities into a dense network of European roads and waterways. From the 1830s to the 1860s, steamboat transport transformed time and space for the areas that benefited from regular services. River traffic accelerated urban development along the Lower Danube and contributed directly to institutional modernization in one of Europe’s peripheries.

Beyond technological advances and the transportation of goods on a trans-imperial waterway, steamboat travel revolutionized human interactions, too. The book offers a fascinating insight into the social and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century, drawing on first-hand accounts of Danube cruising. Describing the story of travelers who interacted, met, and visited the places they stopped, Constantin Ardeleanu creates a transnational history of travel up and down the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople. The pleasures and sometimes the travails of the travelers unfold against a backdrop of technical and economic transformation in the crucial period of modernization.

On the road to Survival City, Tom Vanderbilt maps the visible and invisible legacies of the cold war, exhuming the blueprints for the apocalypse we once envisioned and chronicling a time when we all lived at ground zero. In this road trip among ruined missile silos, atomic storage bunkers, and secret test sites, a lost battleground emerges amid the architecture of the 1950s, accompanied by Walter Cotten’s stunning photographs. Survival City looks deep into the national soul, unearthing the dreams and fears that drove us during the latter half of the twentieth century.

“A crucial and dazzling book, masterful, and for me at least, intoxicating.”—Dave Eggers

“A genuinely engaging book, perhaps because [Vanderbilt] is skillful at conveying his own sense of engagement to the reader.”—Los Angeles Times

“A retracing of Dr. Strangelove as ordinary life.”—Greil Marcus, Bookforum