Book Notes

Book Notes Historic Photos of Birmingham. Text and captions by James L. Baggett. Nashville: Turner Publishing Company, 2006. x, 198 pp. $39.95. ISBN 1-59652-254-2. James L. Baggett, head of the Department of Archives and Manuscripts at the Birmingham Public Library, has assembled a multitude of photographs from ten different archives tracing Birmingham’s founding and growth. Starting in 1873 with the earliest known photograph of the newly founded city, these pictures follow Birmingham from Reconstruction through the 1980s, touching on life, government, education, and events throughout the city’s history. While there is a minimum of text in this volume, each photograph is identified and explained, giving readers a unique glimpse into the past. The Invisible War: The African American Anti-Slavery Resistance from the Stono Rebellion through the Seminole Wars. Edited by Y. N. Kly. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2006. 192 pp. $14.95. ISBN 0-932863-50-7. This collection of essays examines and challenges the notion that there was no significant collective resistance against slavery by African Americans. Topics addressed in this collection include a new look at labor in South Carolina, the Gullah war, and prisoners of war. Many maps, illustrations, and tables compliment these essays, in particular giving the reader a glimpse of African American members of the Seminole Nation. Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History. By Melissa Walker. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. xiv, 324 pp. $45.00. ISBN 0-8131-2409-3. Industrialization of farming brought a shift toward specialization, mechanization, and improved efficiency. Farmers from Alabama to Texas share their memories of the modernization of the farm and the decline of traditional ways of life and work in this collection of oral narratives. Walker identifies recurring patterns in these memories, using them to fill in the gaps of conventional histories, but also examines how history and memory shape each other. ...