Short Takes: Who was the best Stooge?

ForeWord Reviews on the just-released ALABAMA GETAWAY by Allen Tullos: "a compelling view of Alabama’s challenges, and possibly a blueprint for meeting them. Informed readers of politics and Southern culture will be engrossed, and some likely infuriated."

C-SPAN's BookTV speaks with William S. Bush (WHO GETS A CHILDHOOD) about the failure of the American juvenile justice system.

CHOICE Reviews for Academic Libraries ranked FROM MUD TO JUG as essential ("The book is visually stunning, with color photographs of pieces that jump off the page. Newly found historical photographs are wonderful additions") and recommended both SALAMANDERS OF THE SOUTHEAST and RABBLE ROUSERS.

Savannah Morning News story on 150th anniversary of the Civil War mentions CROSSROADS OF CONFLICT.

Michigan Quarterly Review features an interview with Iain Haley Pollock (SPIT BACK A BOY, forthcoming in June); Cerise Press reviews Colin Cheney's HERE BE MONSTERS; Kyle Dargan interviewed on World Wide Word about his newest book, LOGORRHEA DEMENTIA; Allen Braden (A WREATH OF DOWN AND DROPS OF BLOOD) on Seattle's KUOW

Missiology on BEGGING AS A PATH TO PROGRESS: "Having lived in the world-class cities of Lima, Peru and Guayaquil, Ecuador, and being accosted by street urchins in other urban centers in Latin America, Swanson's book was an education for me. It altered my view of the ubiquitous begging child in those teeming metropolises."

"Is Hawkins's the best early biography of Johnson published in 1784-1800? It depends. Who was the best Marx Brother? The best Stooge (of The Three)? The best James Bond on film?" While holding out that Hawkins is a bit "grim and prim and irritable" for his taste, James J. Caudle argues in The New Rambler that "the careful work done by O M Brack in restoring Hawkins's Life to its complete and unabridged form may not appeal to the High Street or Main Street reader. (Their loss.) Brack's new edition will, however, for the foreseeable future form an important part of the scholarly arsenal of standard reference works of Johnson studies, especially concerning those details of Johnson's earlier life which Hawkins knew best."