Book Notes

Book Notes Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785–1810. By Andrew McMichael. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. xii, 226 pp. $22.95. ISBN 978-0-8203-3023-5. The Baton Rouge district of Spanish West Florida, an area that stretched between the Apalachicola and Mississippi rivers, is the star of McMichael’s book. Atlantic Loyalties examines the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that influenced the loyalties of the non-Spaniards living in the area—residents who resisted the call for revolution in 1804 only to rebel in 1810. McMichael challenges the common perception of American freedom triumphing over Spanish tyranny. First Families of Tuscaloosa: 1816, 1818, 1820, 1830. By Joyce Smelley Odom. Self published, 2009 (odombook@yahoo.com). x, 276 pp. ISBN 978-0-9788481-1-8. This book is a detailed list of the first families to identify themselves as Tuscaloosa residents. The author uses a wide variety of materials—census records, deeds, family histories, overseer records, and even a tavern book—to present this index of families and their descendants , including details of marriages, birth and death dates, and occupations when possible. Mountain Brook Village, Then and Now. By Linda J. Nelson and Marjorie L. White. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society, 2009. 78 pp. $18.95. ISBN 0-943994-34-9. This book traces the physical history of Mountain Brook Village, from 1927 planning documents to the new buildings constructed in each decade of the 1900s. The text highlights the changes each era brought to the village, but most illuminating are the pictures of individual buildings, many of which stand today. The Union vs. Dr. Mudd. Expanded edition. By Hal Higdon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. xvi, 241 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-81303267 -2. The questions remain: did Samuel A. Mudd do more than simply set the leg of John Wilkes Booth? Did he actively participate in planning the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? This new edition of the original 1964 book includes a new introduction and epilogue by the author and an updated bibliography to help answer those questions. ...