About the Author

Michael V.R. Thomason is Professor of History at the University of South Alabama and Director of the University Archives in Mobile. He has authored and coauthored several books, including Trying Times and To Remember a Vanishing World, and is editor of the Gulf South Historical Review. Joe Langan, former mayor of Mobile, has been active in Alabama politics and has had a progressive influence on the state for more than 50 years.

Reviews

"This is a first-rate history and also a story of epic quality: the unfolding of a unique city's genesis out of some of the fastest-moving and most turbulent episodes of American history."--Native son Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University