Dan Pollitt, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina Law School and contributor to two volumes of political essays published by NewSouth Books, Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent and American Crisis, Southern Solutions, died earlier this month; he was 88 …
Publishers Weekly calls Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s new memoir Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming a “notable story of [a] devoted journalist,” and indeed the Birmingham News‘s Kathy Kemp notes that “to many young, Southern female journalists making their way in the 1980s, Rheta Grimsley Johnson was our hero and role model, not to mention the best writer we’d ever read.” This praise comes as part of a bevy of well-deserved positive reviews for Rheta’s new book …
“The Alabama Guide: Our People, Resources, and Government is a humdinger and ought to be on a book shelf in every home in the state,” says Alvin Benn in his January 13, 2010 Montgomery Advertiser column. NewSouth Books Editor-in-Chief Randall Williams coordinated and designed the over 700-page Alabama Guide in association with the Alabama Department of Archives and History …
If you’ve never read a forensic audit (or even if you have), Professor Leslie Fletcher of Georgia Southern University’s Business in Savannah magazine recommends you check out Rich Whitt’s Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia. In her review, Fletcher calls Behind the Hedges a “riveting work of non-fiction,” and praises Whitt’s ability to “remove the gossip and hearsay from the scandals that rocked UGA at the beginning of the decade” …
When Auburn University journalism students visited celebrated Alabama author and storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham’s Selma home late last week, they probably never expected to hear the Auburn fight song played on a comb. The students, who had read Mrs. Windham’s journalism memoir Odd-Egg Editor in Professor Ed Williams’ Newswriting class, presented Mrs. Windham with an Auburn T-shirt and were rewarded with a rousing “War Eagle!” in return …
Dr. Regina Benjamin — profiled by journalist Frye Gaillard in his essay in American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril — has been named the next surgeon general by President Barak Obama. Benjamin is an Alabama physician and, as president of the Alabama Medical Association, was the first female African America president of a state medical association …
The Fort Valley, Georgia Leader-Tribune joins a number of news outlets still talking about reporter Rich Whitt’s controversial book Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia. News Editor Victor Kulkosky felt so incensed by the revelations in Behind the Hedges of the behind-the-scenes politicking at the University of Georgia that he devoted three of his “Out of My Mind” columns to the book. “Rich Whitt’s book Behind the Hedges … tells the story of UGA President Michael Adams, nearing his twelfth year on the job, but who on paper appears to be failing on a grand scale,” Kulkosky writes …
Walk into Annell Gordon’s middle school reading classroom, and this is what you will probably hear: “I want a book that’s fun!” or “What can I read now?” According to Ms. Gordon, students are constantly on the prowl for good reading material. Ted Dunagan’s novel A Yellow Watermelon, recently added as a listing by Renaissance Learning as an Accelerated Reader book, will fit the bill for any avid young booklovers, she says …
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rich Whitt’s investigation of fundraising controversies at the University of Georgia, Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, continues to resonate both with national media and the UGA community nationwide. USA Today notes that Behind the Hedges “recasts” the UGA debate, long reported as a conflict between academics and athletics, as instead an examination of the misuse of UGA fundraising money. “The book,” USA Today writes, “includes details such as [UGA President Michael Adams] spending $138,000 of the school’s money on parties surrounding the 2008 Sugar Bowl between Hawaii and Georgia” …
Noted historian and scholar John Hope Franklin died Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at the age of 94. He was the author of the bestselling book From Slavery to Freedom and known for his work on the Brown v. Board of Education court case. Paul M. Gaston of the University of Virginia, author of The New South Creed and the forthcoming Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea (NewSouth, 2009) sent this remembrance …