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Book Notes History of the Boll Weevil in Alabama, 1910–2007. Bulletin 670. By R. H. Smith. Alabama: Auburn Agricultural Experiment Station, 2007. 14 pp. Available free at http://www.ag.auburn.edu/aaes, or from Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Ag Communications & Marketing, 2 Comer Hall, Auburn University, AL 36849. The boll weevil’s notoriety is known throughout the state and the South, and the residents of Enterprise erected a statue recognizing the pest and its effects on farming . This short work recognizes the boll weevil as “second only to the Civil War as the most important influence on Southern society, history, and culture.” In fourteen short pages it examines the history of the boll weevil, eradication efforts, the push to find crops other than cotton, and the use of education to combat infestation. Ironclads At War: The Monitor vs. the Merrimac. By Dan Abnett. Illustrated by Ron Wagner and Dheeraj Verma. New York: Osprey Publishing, 2007. 48 pp. $9.95. ISBN 978-1-84603-053-6. Tweens and teens will appreciate this superbly written and meticulously illustrated comic book by Osprey Publishing. Author Dan Abnett and illustrators Ron Wagner and Dheeraj Verma bring to life the March 9, 1862, Civil War clash between the Confederate Merrimac (officially the CSS Virginia) and the Union Monitor. The two ironclads pounded each other for nearly four hours in one of the most important naval battles in American history. The comic book includes a brief historical introduction, a conclusion, and a handy glossary. History teachers will find Ironclads At War particularly useful, especially with those hard-to-reach students who need a little extra motivation . Never for Want of Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia. By C. L. Bragg, Charles D. Ross, Gordon A. Blaker, Stephanie A. T. Jacobe, and Theodore P. Savas. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. xvi, 318 pp. $44.95. ISBN 978-1-57003-657-6. This coffee-table sized book tells the history of the only large-scale permanent building project undertaken by the Confederacy, a powder works and munitions plant designed by Col. George Washington Rains and a cadre of assistants. The facility had several ties to the war effort in Alabama and successfully manufactured gunpowder and ammunition throughout the conflict. Although only one chimney of the building remains standing, O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 309 Never for Want of Powder contains seventy-five color plates and fifty-four black-and-white photographs of the structure. The five authors—a historian , physicist, curator, architectural historian, and biographer—present a wide-ranging and complete portrait of this Confederate landmark. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. By Heather Andrea Williams. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii, 304 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-8078-2920-X. Williams presents an in-depth lookatAfricanAmericaneducationfromslaverythroughReconstruction. The author examines the creative ways by which southern blacks educated themselves during slavery and argues that such efforts created an intense desire to gain knowledge following emancipation. Unlike other such studies that emphasize the role of whites, Williams stresses the importance of ordinary African Americans in securing educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of freedmen in the decades following the Civil War. By teaching, building schools, and supporting taxpayer-funded systems of public education, African Americans helped transform southern education in ways that eventually benefited both blacks and whites. Slavery and American Economic Development. By Gavin Wright. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. x, 162 pp. $25.00. ISBN 08071 -3183-0. Wright, the William Robertson Coe Professor in American Economic History at Stanford University, examines the economic divergence between North and South in the antebellum era. He suggests that the decisive factor setting these different economies apart was the abolition of slavery in the northern states and the exclusion of slavery from the Northwest Territory, and he portrays the decades between the Constitution and southern secession as “an economic cold war between two fundamentally different systems of property rights.” A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature. By Jacqueline Goldsby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 418 pp. $25.00. ISBN 0-226-30138-9...

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