With 126 color photographs and 30 quotes from noted Alabama storytellers, Robin McDonald creates the "mood" of small towns everywhere as they quietly retire from service.

Heart of a Small Town is Robin McDonald s paean to a time when small rural communities all over this country bustled with life. Concentrating on Alabama, he draws his subjects from those areas of the state that have been bypassed by major highways and left somewhat deserted. Places like Verbena, Mentone, Burnt Corn, Newbern, Epes, and Enterprise; places in the Black Belt, in Wiregrass Country, in the...

Confederate service, Confederate propaganda.

Although not born in the South (Zurich, Switzerland, 1834), Henry Hotze's devotion to the cause of the Confederacy was as ardent as that of any native secessionist. As a member of the Mobile Cadets, an elite volunteer company of the Gulf City, Hotze was ordered to Virginia at the start of war as part of the Third Alabama Regiment. He distinguished himself in many ways, primarily off the battlefield as a clerk and European go-between. In November of 1861, he was appointed to the position of Commercial Agent at London by C.S.A. Secretary of...

A constellation of Black Belt towns arose during Alabama's territorial decades, communities like Selma, Camden, Eutaw, Tuskegee, Greenville, and many more. Visions...