Book Notes

Book Notes Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner: Bear Bryant, The Goal Line Stand, and a Chance of a Lifetime. By Barry Krauss and Joe M. Moore. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. x, 125 pp. $26.95. ISBN 0-8173-1541-1. Ain’t Nothin’ But A Winner is the story of University of Alabama former linebacker Barry Krauss’ much publicized “goal line stand” in the 1979 Sugar Bowl. In a critical fourth down play, Krauss prevented Pennsylvania State’s Mike Guman from scoring and propelled the Crimson Tide to a 14-7 win over the number one ranked Nittany Lions. Written by Krauss and former teammate Joe Moore, the book offers a unique perspective on the events leading up to the game, the influence of legendary University of Alabama head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, and how a college team becomes a national champion. Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865. By Frank J. Byrne. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. x, 297 pp. $50.00. ISBN 0-8131-2404-2. While the merchant class was not a coherent or organized community in the antebellum and Confederate South, urban merchants, village storekeepers, traders, and hucksters were an established presence in the region. In this book, Byrne describes these merchants; their families; the contributions they made to the South’s economy, culture, and politics before and during the Civil War; and how they differed from their northern counterparts. A Choctaw Reference Grammar. By George Aaron Broadwell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. xxiii, 375 pp. $70.00. ISBN 0-80321315 -8. The Choctaw tribe was divided into Oklahoma and Mississippi groups during the relocations spurred by the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Today the number of fluent speakers of Choctaw—one of several languages in the Muskogean family group—is dwindling. In order to preserve the language and its dialects, Broadwell spent nineteen years working with individuals on Choctaw reservations and studying 150 years’ worth of written material to create this comprehensive reference grammar. It describes the morphology of the language and the treatment of phrase structure, word order, case marking, and complementation. Although the primary focus of this work is Choctaw, related Muskogean languages such as Alabama are used as comparisons. T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 78 Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History. Edited by Mark K. Bauman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. 480 pp. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8173-1504-7. $35.00 (paper). ISBN 0-81735291 -0. Bauman has gathered sixteen essays into this collection covering a broad geographical and chronological span of Jewish history in the southeast. Divided into four sections—Jews and Judaism, Small-town Life, Interaction, and Identity—the anthology explores questions such as how the forces of adaptation and continuity intertwine, how majorities and minorities reacted to the Jewish presence, and how Jewish, American, and southern identities combined. Clive Webb’s contribution, “Montgomery Jews and Civil Rights, 1954–1960,” may be of particular interest to readers of the Review. The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. By Frye Gaillard. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. 3rd edition. xix, 215 pp. $34.95. ISBN 1-57003645 -4. Charlotte’s public school system began voluntary desegregation in 1957 and, after the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Supreme Court decision, became the national test case for busing. In this third edition of The Dream Long Deferred, Gaillard updates the five-decade history of Charlotte’s struggle for desegregation by adding a discussion of the recent push by white citizens to end busing and return to neighborhood schools. He examines their court victory and the resegregation of the school system along economic and racial lines. Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians. By Frank G. Speck. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. xvi, 177 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0-8032-9313-5. The Yuchis of Alabama and Georgia were forcibly relocated over the Trail of Tears into what is now Oklahoma. In 1904, anthropology graduate student Frank G. Speck visited the Yuchi to document their language and record cultural information, as well as gather...