Book Notes

Profiles of Paducah People. By Allan Rhodes Sr. and John E. L. Robertson Sr. (Paducah: Image Graphics, Inc., 2008. Pp. 160 paper)

Part encyclopedia and part who's who, this volume continues the tradition of Kentucky's local directories that give short biographies of the prominent citizens of a county. This volume contains entries covering a range of individuals from politicians and church leaders to restaurant owners and football stars, and it will be a useful resource for genealogists and local historians.

Patriotic Envelopes of the Civil War: The Iconography of Union and Confederate Covers. By Steven R. Boyd. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. Pp. x, 132. $36.95 cloth)

This book does double duty as an analysis of the themes and messages conveyed by both Union and Confederate letter-writers during the Civil War and as a valuable visual guide to the envelopes themselves. Accompanying Boyd's text are twenty-three pages with full-color images of the envelopes discussed. Taken as a whole, this should prompt lively discussion about the political culture of the war both in and outside the classroom.

Refugitta of Richmond: The Wartime Recollections, Grave and Gay, of Constance Cary Harrison. Edited by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and S. Kittrell Rushing. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. Pp. xviii, 251. $46.00 cloth)

Hughes and Rushing's edited and annotated edition of the Civil War memoirs of this Virginia resident will likely find a home with readers familiar with Mary Chesnut's more famous diary/memoir. Like so many Confederate memoirs published recently, this will prove valuable for understanding as much about the postwar process of remembering and forgetting as it will wartime life in the rebel capital, thus making it doubly valuable.

The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow: As Revealed by Her Own Letters. By Myra Helmer Pritchard, edited by Jason Emerson. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii, 186. $19.95 cloth)

In his The Madness of Mary Lincoln (2007), Emerson drew on much of the evidence he has compiled, edited, and annotated in this volume. This companion to that monograph contains both the voice of Mary herself as well as an account of the (largely successful) contemporary efforts to silence her. Those wishing to retrace Emerson's detective work will find this illuminating.

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol. 16: Sports & Recreation. Edited by Harvey H. Jackson III. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Pp. xx, 383. $45.00 cloth; $22.95 paper)

From debutante balls to NASCAR, this volume covers the diversity of recreation and sport in the South. That diversity, indeed, is the central theme running through the entries, as it encompasses the leisure activities of the many racial, ethnic, and cultural groups that make up (and have made up) this region most commonly remembered for its homogeneity.