Customer Reviews (5)

Alabama's "Gone With the Wind???"
Reading "Stars Fell on Alabama" brings to mind lines from the opening scenes of "Gone With The Wind," lines that said something like "look for them (these days)no more because they are gone with the wind..." The same could be said of the Alabama described in Carl Carmer's book.

The days of Margaret Mitchell's classic "Gone With the Wind" never really existed, at least not in the romanticized way in which she wrote about them, but the days described in "Stars Fell on Alabama" did happen. They did, unfortunately, exist, but thankfully, for the most part, they, too, are noe"gone with the wind..."

This book is about life, a cross section of real life in the terriblyrural South from about 1921 through 1927.It was not a pretty time or an easy time, and these are not quaint, pretty sketches of life during that time.The innocent, naive and politically correct reader of today might find parts of this book, most of it actually, quite offensive.And rightly so. But these times, these days and these ways, did exist. And they put life in today's Alabama into perspective.

It is clear to a reader living in Alabama that the state has progressed far more in the last 75 years (1930-2005) than it did in the 75 years immediately after the Civil War (1865-1940). That may be true for the country as a whole, but it is especially true for Alabama.Many intellectuals and scholars cite this book as one of the points at which this progress began. As Howell Raines writes in his introduction (added in 1990) this book was one of the first times Alabamians read about themselves as others saw them. It was not a pretty picture, not all bad not all ugly, but for the most part, it was not how Alabamians felt about themselves and not how they wanted their state--and themselves--to be perceived by those outside the state.To be sure, there was some beauty among the thorns, but it was a racist time and the thorns greatly outnumbered the rosebuds.There are no memories of the grand and glorious "Lost Cause" in these pages. Any and everything but.

Speaking of Howell Raines' introduction, it would be far more useful and appropriate as an Afterword or Epilogue. In this book it would be better to put what you have read in perspective than to write about what you are going to read. That's not true for all books, but it is true for this book.

In the hours after finishing "Stars Fell on Alabama," two thoughts come to mind again and again:

--"We may not be where we ought to be, but, thank God and by the grace of God, we aren't where we used to be..."

--And this book was obviously written before football took over the University of Alabama (where Carmer taught for six years) and the state as a whole.Football is never mentionied, either during his time in Tuscaloosa, or in his travels around the state. Not once.In that respect, life in Alabama has certainly changed.But even now, there are racial overtones in the rivalry between Alabama and Auburn.But that is another story for another time.

If you are from Alabama, live in Alabama,or want to learn about the rural South as it was in the twenties and thirties, read the book. You will learn from it and you will enjoy it.Parts of it will make you cringe but it will be a learning experience.And learning is good, even if you don't appreciate and agree with all that you learn or are exposed to.

Stars Fell On Alabama
To properly understand history, you must be able to accept all aspects of your topic, good, bad, and all shadings in between, as sources of information and for enrichment of your knowledge.History rarely conforms to our personal view of the world, for there are so many factors which are beyond our control. So it is with Stars Fell on Alabama.The South was no friend to anyone but itself, and this book gives the reader, no matter what their background, an honest, sometimes raw, sometimes fantastic, sometimes poignant, picture of what a part of the South was like for everyone, black and white, and that is its value to anyone who read it and especially to anyone who uses it to teach about the South.

Fictionalized History
I often wondered why falling stars appeared on Alabama license plates and why Dylan sang about the same. Ultimately I found my way to this book, written by Carl Carmer over 60 years ago. The answer to my original questions are within the book. The forward is perhaps more interesting and revealing, exposing the strength and Achilles heal of Carmer's work. Carmer was writing about the Alabama he experienced at the time he resided there. It is a snapshot of history and was very controversial when originally printed. So, it has some literary and historical value. However, many of the characters and incidents are composed of amalgamated individuals and conglomerated incidents. So, it is more representational like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn than an accurate recounting of actual events. Allegedly, Carmer was trying to mask actual places and people to protect their privacy but it left me questioning the authenticity and veracity of the whole. It took the edge off, making the book much less appealing and leaving me disinterested in places. Is it fiction or non-fiction? Is it exaggerated or not? How much to rely on this thin ice is what the reader will have to consider and that will be a distraction throughout.

Ssome interesting things in the book
The author apparently spent six years in Alabama in the late twenties and early thirties.He made various trips around Alabama and relates stories he heard from people.He was at Decatur, Ala., at the time the second Scottsboro trial was about to be held.He relates comments by people he talked to about the trial and the comments are a sad picture into the racism rampant in Alabama in those years.The book uses the n word without any qualms, and tho the author does not appear to approve of the Jim Crow way of life his condemnation is absent.I did not appreciate this dated book, which in 1934 was a best seller.

Book of immense influence, still fresh after 65 years
Before Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Carl Carmer took a train from New York to Alabama to become a college professor, writing of a strange country he visited and returned from, as different as another planet for his known world. He roamed and wrote of the cornwhisky- swilling backwatersof Alabama and the rough-hewn urban centers like Birmingham during the 20s and early 30s -- the time of the Scottsboro boys, the Klux Klan in its first great revival, deep oral and cultural traditions among Alabama African Americans including the title, inspiration for the 30s pop song about a meteor shower more than a century before.. The Civil War veteran turned murderer of U.S. marshals and religious zealot -- lynched to avoid a trial and certain execution -- before Jim Jones and Waco.The great outlaws and train robbers, Rube Burrow and Railroad Bill, one white, the other black and so feared his body was displayed in several cities to prove he was dead. A period piece -- the N word is used-- it also paints a picture of a complex and diverse black community, its cultural and folk roots,its white relationships. Many Alabama natives, including this expatriate, would notknow these tales but for Carmer who returned to New York to write about that state and area for decades more But his Alabama is Sleepy Hollow with a bite like "Two-toed Tom" the 15 foot gator trapped in a pond by stalkers only to find him surfacing in a nearby pond, devouring a 12 year old child, decades before scientists learned of the ancient underwater tunnels of the reptiles. Tom moved on to become a legend in Florida where he's still talked about just as Carmer's retelling of the great tales lives on in Alabama, too oftenwithout his name attached. Sometimes a bizarre mixture of charm and horror, and perhaps a bit of hyperbole, Stars Fell on Alabama is one of those Academic reprints that reminds us the past is never so simple as we might dream and that the man with manners is to be as feared as the trainrobber with a gun ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rare eyewitness account of life in Alabama Territory
This excellent book is a rare, detailed,eye-witness account of early Alabama history including the Territory days.Gaines was a highly intelligent, educated man who moved to the Mississippi Territory in what is now Southwestern Alabama above Mobile to become the assistant factor to the Choctaw Indians
just after the US decides to set up its own houses or "factories"to trade with the Indian tribes.
Gaines has a long ,colorful, variedcareer inearly Alabama.
The following outline is what the book primarily covers:

A- Gaines'sDealing with the Choctaw Tribes
1-detailed accounts of various Choctaw chiefs and choctaw traders including the famous Pushmataha.
2- Gaines's detailed account of the Choctaw removal including the scouting party to select village sites for the Choctaws.

B-Gaines's Career as a Choctaw Agent
1- his inability to get paid for his services and bad dealings with Lewis Cass in Washington City.
2-his good relations with the Choctaws and fondness for them.
3- detailed accounts of an Indian agent and routine life

C- Gaine'sCareer as a State Senator and State banker
1- He is elected to a short term as an early state Senator but very little detail is given here. This is when the state capitol is moved from Cahaba to Tuscaloosa.
2- He has an interesting career as a State banker and is chosen to sell state bonds for a huge sum of money wherever and however he can. He also lobbies for a railroad to be built from Mobile north. the story of being Alabama' s first bond salesman
is most interesting.

D- Gaine'sencounter with ex- vice-president Aaron Burr.
It is the brother of Gaines, Gen Gaines,who captures Burr in Southwestern Alabama ( then Ms Territory) and delivers him to Richmond,Va. They have an interestingvisit with Burr at the home of Gaines as Burr is found near their home.

E- The Creek Wars of 1813-14 and Andrew Jackson
After the Massacre of Fort Mims, it is Gaines who writes and informs Gen Jackson of the massacrewhich brings the Tennessee Volunteers to the Alabama Territory to attack the hostile Creeks. Gaines is a personal friend of Andrew Jackson.

F- Gaines'sEncounters with famous people.....
For a man living in the wilderness of the Alabama and Mississippi Territory, Gaines knows a lot of important people.
a short list of the people he knows and meets is:

1- Aaron Burr
2- Andrew Jackson
3- Lewis Cass
4- General Desnouettes of the French Colony
5- Albert Gallatin
6- many Alabama Governors and senators
7- All of theChoctaw chiefs and traders during his time period

Its apparent that the first love in Gaines career was his Choctaw indians. the trading house,and his management of the affairs with the various chiefs and treaties and his management of the eventualChoctaw removal to the west.

Gaines speaks very little here of his family or his career in politics as a state senator.

This book is highly recommended to students of Alabama or Choctaw Indian history. It is in a class with
Woodward's"Reminiscenses"or LouisMilforts "memoires" concerning eye witness accounts of early life in what became the state of Alabama. Much of Pickett's history of Alabama was provided to Pickett by Mr Gaines. Other important primary accounts of Alabama history are those of Adair, Bartram, and, Romans which are more general in nature and also appy to Georgia and Florida.

This collection of memoiresis well edited and provides fine notes and references along with an index of important people within the book as well as maps.

... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

a good classic worth reading
i decided to read this book after reading about it in black issues book review.I twas a great story and well ahead of its time.Main character is a farm girl who decides that single parenthood is the route for her.Itis interesting to note the attitudes then about this issue vs ours today. This book is hard to find and you may have to special order but it is worthit ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Classic for Kids
I am nearly 40 years old but this story pops up in my memories every now and then when I see my son. ....It is a timeless story about a young boy at the verge of manhood and the sometimes painful experiences that boys go through during that period.The characters are wonderful. I still remember Boy Sword and his grandfather and the hogleg pistol that Boy used, and his dad building a hive for the swarming bees.Absolutely fantastic writing!I am going to order a copy just so that I can read it to my eight-year old son.

Wonderful portrayal of a sharecropper's family in the 1930s
This is a loving and warm story of a Mississippi family during the depression.As a Mississippian, I have never read a book that so clearly gives the reader the sense of being in the Mississippi farm culture during this time.The characters are based on Deal's real life experiences and each of them is a living, breathing person you will come to care deeply about. I hope you take the time to read it ... Read more

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From an Earlier Era
The writer captures life in the time and place her novel is set with total authenticity.Her characters are as genuine as next door neighbors of that era.I loved this book.

Paradox, Definitely
The Last of the Whitfields is simultaneously serious and humorous. Set in a "backwoods little town," Ashton, Georgia, it tells a little girl's story as she matures in the "backwards" South. It is difficult to tell the South's story through the eyes of child, but Sanguinetti delivers. The child speaker brings a more light tone to the racial issues of the 1960s. Issues like Civil Rights (Sit-ins), Integration, and racial misconceptions are touched upon (though ever so lightly). This is a wonderful book for a light read, especially if you love Southern literature, as I do. (I should know, too, y'all; I'm from the South). ... Read more

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The first two decades of the 19th century found many Americans eager to move away from the crowded eastern seaboard and into new areas where their goals of landownership might be realized. Such movement was encouraged by Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe - collectively known as the Jeffersonians - who believed that the country's destiny was to have total control over the entire North American continent. The Jeffersonian presidents would have used any means, short of all-out war, to expand the boundaries of the United States. Filibusters and Expansionists explores the motives of those presidents in office during that time and also the successful and unsuccessful intrigues and episodes of the movement. Utilizing memoirs, diaries, biographies, newspapers, and vast amounts of both foreign and domestic correspondence, Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., and Gene A. Smith reveal an insider's view of the filibusters and expansionists, the colorful - if not sometimes nefarious - characters on the front line of the United States's land grab. ... Read more

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Hernando de Soto
This is a novel based on Hernando de Soto's Sixteenth Century expedition through what is known as the Southern states (US) in search of gold and a passage to China.

Hernando de Soto (Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz, Spain, c.1496/1497[1]-May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, was the first European to discover the Mississippi River. The exact course of de Soto's expedition is subject to discussions and controversy among historians and local politicians.

1539 to early-1540 in Florida
1540 - Through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi
1541 - To the west through Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas.
De Soto died of a fever on May 21, 1542, in the Indian village of Guachoya (near present-day McArthur, Arkansas)on the western banks of the Mississippi.

Lost in the Wilderness
While Andrew Lytle is best known for his role with the Nashville Agrarians, he also was an excellent historical novelist. Some of his best works, such as the novel "At the Moon's Inn" and the novella "Alchemy", deal with Spain in the New World. While one would not think colonial Spain would be fertile ground for Lytle's Agrarian vision, his message comes through very clearly in this interesting, insightful and exciting novel.

Lylte examines the ill fated and unproductive De Soto expedition which, in three years, discovered the Mississippi, ravaged the natives of the Southeast and found nothin in terms of treasure, found no colonies and made no converts to Christianity. In an excellent first scene, Lytle has heroes of the Reconquista and the legendary survivor da Vaca warn Soto and his men about what waits for them in La Florida. Lytle then takes the reader through the New World where the Spanish turn their backs on all the glories of Western Civilization and the moral foundations of the Christian faith in search of gold. This is refinforced by memories of Columbus and descriptions of him as an alchemist and a confession from a ghost at the end of the novel. Dreams of fortune can destroy men as they cut the ties of the past and wander in an unfamiliar wilderness. That is certainly a key aspect of Lytle's vision.

The introduction is excellent on Soto and scholarship of that never conquered conquisidor. It is not as good on Lytle and M. E. Bradford's essay on "Alchemy" and "At the Moon's Inn" may be a better place to start. There is also one of the stangest blurbs I have ever seen on a book on the back cover of the Library of Alabama Classics paperback from, of all people, former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida praising Soto. It's fair to say ole Bob did not read the book. Lytle's book is devestating to Soto in this provactive and satisfying novel. ... Read more

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Southern Honor
Lytle's fictional account should be read as a companion piece to Bertram Wyatt-Brown's Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford). Wyatt-Brown's thesis is that honor functioned as the most important, though often too quickly overlooked, social mechanism in the Antebellum South, ensuring that every facet of society behaved within the confines of a stringent, mutually agreed upon code of conduct. Reaction--either positive or negative--to a person's behavior was thus both internal to the person and reflected by society as a whole. The degree of a person's acceptance by society was a mirror that reflected his or her own sense of self-worth, which was directly related to the degree to which he or she conformed to universally accepted societal behavioral norms. Deviating from these norms resulted in social castigation--essentially assuring overall ostracism due to loss of honor. The only two means of recourse was (1) to challenge society's appraisal, frequently in a violent manner; or (2) to leave town, or even the state ("Gone to Texas," was the general term for this, which is literally what Lytle's fictional family attempted to do in Long Night, until that planned backfired and they resorted to violence to avenge the their lost honor).

Strangely, Wyatt-Brown completely ignores Lytle's Long Night in illustrating his point about how honor operated in the Old South and often lead to bloody ends, although he relies on countless other fictional works. Nonetheless, both works greatly inform each another, rendering much greater understanding of the period and the place, and the motivations of those living in them.


Lytle goes far in dramatising how, at the outbreak of the War, Southerners were required to temporariy set aside personal honor for regional honor, and how one man's refusal to do so led to tragic inner turmoil and loss of self-identity.

Best Civil War novel ever !
This the the first novel by the great critic a much neglected-novelist, Andrew Lytle.The story is narrated by an older uncle to his nephew during one long night as he tells the story of his Alabama family around the period of the Civil War.Like Cold Mountain, Lytle's research and knowledge of the customs, speech, and lifestyle of his characters is perfect.Though this was his first novel, you'll see Lytle was already a master of fiction.When you're finished read "The Fathers" the Civil War novel by Lytle's friend poet,Alan Tate. ... Read more

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