Alabama Booksmith

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In this companion to his first, best-selling cookbook, the beloved Southern chef Frank Stitt travels to Italy and brings the best of Mediterranean cuisine back home. To Stitt's mind, the two regions—Italy and the American South—share commonalities. Both native cuisines have a tradition of turning ... (more)humble ingredients—ground corn, bitter greens, cured pork, the daily catch—into poetry on the plate. And as the chef points out in his lively introduction to the book, this is elemental cooking based on the purity and simplicity of the freshest and finest ingredients. Yet leave it to Stitt to make Italian cuisine his own. "There's no Pompano in Venice, but ours, fresh from Apalachicola, fits into the cartoccio (Italian fish stew) perfectly; our Chilton County white peaches are squeezed by hand for a bellini; our wild Gulf shrimp, oysters, crab, and fish are easily a match for their Mediterranean equivalents," Stitt writes. This appealing new cookbook includes the best of the Southern-influenced Italian recipes he has served at his Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant Bottega Restaurant and Café, for the last two decades—the Tomato Chutney and Roasted Sweet Pepper Pizza, Lamb Shanks with Sweet Peas and Mint, and fabulous desserts including Zabaglione Meringue Cake. Accompanied by sweet recollections of his journeys to Italy, this inspiring and accessible cookbook proves once again why the novelist Pat Conroy calls Stitt "the best chef in America."

On making Kim Sunee's acquaintance in the introduction to this charming memoir, it's hard not to envy the young woman swimming laps in the pool overlooking the orchard of her petit ami's vast compound in the High Alps of Provence, but below the surface of this portrait is a turbulent quest for identity. ... (more)Abandoned at age three in a Korean marketplace, Sunee is adopted by an American couple who raise her in New Orleans. . In the 1990s she settles, after a fashion, in France with Olivier Baussan, a multimillionaire of epicurean tastes and controlling disposition. Whenever she feels lonely, panicked, or out of place, Sunee finds solace in preparing gourmet meals. But time in Olivier's kitchen brings her no closer to discovering who she really is. A trip to South Korea proves disastrous (Sunee has not a scrap of information about her parents or siblings). Meanwhile, Olivier becomes more controlling by the day. She struggles to create a home for herself in the kitchen, cooking gargantuan meals for their large circle of friends, until her restive nature and Baussan's impatience with her literary ambitions compel her to move on. The gutsy Cajun and ethereal French recipes that serve as chapter codas are matched by engaging storytelling.

Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions ... (more)in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, Washington’s strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.

Having previously written books on finding a man, planning a wedding, raising kids and coming through a divorce, Browne's latest offers hilarious tips on enjoying our inexorable trudge into Geezerdom. Browne is already checking off the days until November 23, 2012, when she turns 60 and can move into ... (more)a retirement home; at 80, she plans to start smoking again. Looking back at her youthful follies (like slathering on baby oil for all-day tanning sessions), she warns, Karma is listening and she has ears like a bat. She and her sister have a pact to Get the Pillow (smother the other in her sleep) when the time comes. In Browne's case, that will be if I start watching reality TV, quoting Dr. Phil, riding roller coasters and seem to have forsaken bacon in favor of anything soy. While exhorting the pleasures of giving in to comfortable sandals and roomy underwear, Browne, in her best book yet, offers laugh-out-loud, slightly off-topic digressions (she passionately defends the term brick shithouse and rebukes tummy-control swimsuits).

Don Noble follows up on his immensely popular Climbing Mt. Cheaha to produce another anthology of Alabama fiction, comic, this time. Over twenty writers, including Suzanne Hudson, Tom Franklin, Lee Smith, Dan Wallace, Joe Formicella, and Madison Jones.

Truely Noonan is the quintessential Southern boy made good. Like his older sister, Courtney, Truely left behind the slow, sweet life of Mississippi for jet-set San Francisco, where he earned a fortune as an Internet entrepreneur. Courtney and Truely each find happy marriages--until, as if cursed by success, ... (more)those marriages start to crumble. Then their lives are interrupted by an unexpected stranger--a troubled teenager named Arnold, garrulous, charming, thuggishly dressed, and determined to move in to their world. Arnold turns their lives upside down--and in the process this unlikely trio becomes the family that each had been searching for. In the best Southern fiction tradition, Kincaid has brought us an inspiring story about finding the way home.

Meet the Cole brothers, charismatic country boys with more money than God—half moonshine and half martini. Roland, the younger, is running for governor of Tennessee, while J.T. maneuvers to bring a full-fledged world's fair to the small city of Glennville. To the dismay of the old guard, the fair succeeds, ... (more)making the Coles among the most important men in the state. All that stands between them and grander ambitions is an investigation into how their bank made all that money so damn fast. Life in the fast lane has taken its toll on the Coles' families; their wives and mistresses are among the sharpest, sassiest creations of recent fiction. The quiet center of the story is Mike Teague, the Coles' advisor, who knows one of those women too well, and also where all the bodies are buried. Here is a portrait, raucous yet nuanced, of what the South has been, and what it will become.

In the nineteenth century, the people of Alabama relied on newspapers to learn about the world outside their own hometowns. Prior to the 1890s, the technology did not exist to economically publish photographs in newspapers, so some publishers employed artists to draw and engrave images of places, events, ... (more)and people. Many of these engraved illustrations, which accompanied news stories, poems, and short fiction, are impressive for their detail and artistic quality. From the 1850s to the 1890s, more than 250 engraved images of Alabama were published in national and international illustrated newspapers. This book contains nearly 50 of those illustrations from five nineteenth-century newspapers such as Harper's Weekly. These striking black-and-white images depict city and country scenes of everything from politics and civil war to agriculture, industry, entertainment, and everyday life, providing readers passionate about history and art a unique insight into Alabama's rich cultural past. To reserve a signed copy please Click Here