A great book and a good friend

I just found out that my friend Susan Youngblood Ashmore at Oxford College of Emory Univeristy won the Southern Historical Association's Francis B. Simkins Award - recognizing the best first book by an author in the field of southern history over a two-year period - and the Southern Association of Women Historians' Willie Lee Rose Prize. Not a bad take for one conference. Her book is Carry It On:
The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972 (University of Georgia Press, 2008). It's worth your time.

Marching in Step

One of my good friends has just published a book those of you who study, read, and ruminate about the South and American culture should find rewarding. It's Alexander Macaulay's Marching in Step: Masculinity, Citizenship, and The Citadel in Post-World War II America (University of Georgia Press, 2009). It's about the South, but it's also about much more. Macaulay examines the concept of American masculinity during the Cold War as seen through the prism of an institution whose self-described mission was to build "whole men." Read it. Buy it. They make excellent gifts. The holidays are almost upon us.

Booker T. Washington and the Long Civil Rights Movement

Check out Ralph Luker's post on Cliopatria concerning Robert J. Norrell's new biography of Booker T. Washington. I've not read Norrell's book yet, but this makes me want to take a look. More interesting is Luker's riff on scholars like Jacquelyn Hall, Glenda Gilmore, and other scholars of the "long civil rights movement." These historians have moved the focus of civil rights scholarship away from the King-centered narrative that we have become accustomed to. In general, I think that's the right move, but there are some who see problems with this new approach. Certainly there are some generational dynamics at work here, as well as some tension between those who were active in the movement and those who are students of it. But, the "long civil rights movement" has injected renewed vigor, vision, and nuance into the study of the fight for racial equality in the United States. That's important. So is Luker's post. It represents the type of debate we historians should be having about the grand narrative of civil rights and so many other topics in American history.

Eric Foner's Lincoln Recommendations

Last night, Eric Foner, one of the nation's most important scholars of nineteenth century America, offered his suggestions for book on Lincoln on NPR. Take a listen...

His suggestions:

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
Lincoln : A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine
The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes

I would add Foner's own Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World.