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Freedom Rides guidebook commemorates 50th anniversary

The civil rights history of the Freedom Rides has been well documented in a number of fine and award-winning volumes. But until now there has not been a short history on the subject. The Freedom Rides and Alabama by Noelle Matteson, newly published by NewSouth Books, is a much-needed account: a concise guidebook which describes key people, places, and events and which provides historical context for the rides …

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May 20, 2011 No Comments

Montgomery Advertiser praises The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History as “the best”

In a glowing article, The Montgomery Advertiser’s Al Benn praises NewSouth Books’ new title The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939-1949 as “the best of the batch” of books on the Airmen “because it takes a different approach” to the story of this famed military unit. Benn enthusiastically describes the book as “an encyclopedia crammed with everything you ever wanted to know about the organization” …

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May 16, 2011 No Comments

Virginia Pounds Brown wins Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award

NewSouth Books would like to congratulate Virginia Pounds Brown, author of The World of the Southern Indians: Tribes, Leaders, and Customs from Prehistoric Times to the Present, on winning the Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award for contributions to Alabama history. The Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award is given every other year to a distinguished professional whose work “encourage joint historical endeavors and mutual understanding among nonprofessional and professional historians” …

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May 12, 2011 No Comments

Student Freedom Riders to talk Beyond the Burning Bus with Phil Noble

NewSouth Books would like to commend the journey of the 2011 Student Freedom Ride, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides through the South. The program is composed of 40 college students from over 30 states, hand-picked by American Experience, whose goal is to spark a national debate concerning the role of civic engagement in today’s society. The group will travel the course laid out by the original Freedom Rides, arriving in Anniston, Alabama, on May 11. While there, they will meet Rev. J. Phillips Noble, who will give the riders autographed copies of his book, Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town, which discusses the effects of the Anniston bus bombing of 1961 on that small Southern town …

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April 20, 2011 No Comments

Rheta Grimsley Johnson writes “On Faith” in Washington Post

“The one belief I never revealed in three decades-plus was my disbelief,” writes syndicated newspaper columnist and NewSouth author Rheta Grimsley Johnson in a March 28 guest-post on the Washington Post “On Faith” blog; Johnson would later talk about religion in her memoir Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming. “I figured that straw for a Bible Belt columnist would be the last. I never said I did believe. But I never said I did not. It was a sin of omission” …

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April 8, 2011 No Comments

Anna Olswanger’s Shlemiel Crooks musical to premiere

A number of reviewers have complimented Anna Olswanger’s award-winning children’s book Shlemiel Crooks for the music of its Yiddish-inflected language. Now, Shlemiel Crooks and a number of Olswanger’s other stories will actually be set to music, as a new Shlemiel Crooks musical comes to the stage. Shlemiel Crooks: The Musical, directed by Wendy Gross Baker, premieres April 10 at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York, featuring the hall’s professional Poppy Seed Players troupe …

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April 7, 2011 No Comments

60 Minutes discusses NewSouth’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

The important conversation continues on the NewSouth edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. On last night’s episode of 60 Minutes, reporter Byron Pitts held a far-reaching conversation with NewSouth Books editor Randall Williams and University of Oregon professor David Bradley about the controversies surrounding Twain’s works, the use of racial epithets in today’s society, and NewSouth’s publication …

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March 21, 2011 No Comments

Bob Zellner interviewed on Keith Beauchamp’s Injustice Files

Civil rights activist Bob Zellner continues to advocate for equality and understanding even while balancing some newfound attention. Zellner has been interviewed for an Oprah show segment on the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides set to air May 4, and and pre-production activities continue on a feature film to be executive produced by Spike Lee based on Zellner’s award-winning memoir, published by NewSouth Books, called The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement …

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March 8, 2011 No Comments