Books like Deep South Dynasty — picked by fans

When Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877, he was the richest man in America. Two generations later, the family parlayed their wealth into social status in the city's newly defined class structure.

Anderson Cooper, CNN news anchor, and his co-author trace the city's social history, beginning with Anderson's ancestor who emigrated to the small Dutch colony at the tip of Manhattan as an indentured servant. The story ends with Anderson's mother Gloria, the last Vanderbilt to have known the family at the peak of its wealth and social clout before lavish spending took its toll.

Most affecting are Anderson’s memories of his mother that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with sharing life with someone we love.

We all know of Sarah and Angelina Grimké, sisters who, before the Civil War, left their South Carolina home and became well-known abolitionists in the North.

But the family also included their brother Henry, a brutal, slave-holding man, his three children by Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman in his household, and their descendants. Two brothers became part of the post-Civil War Black elite and one descendant, Angelina Weld Grimké, made a name for herself as a poet during the Harlem Renaissance.

In addition to reexamining the legacy of Sarah and Angelina, author Kerri Greenidge reminds readers how families were formed under the sword of slavery and that recovery from its wounds is incomplete, even today. 

In 1866, Lazarus Morganthau emigrated from Germany, intent on rebuilding the fortune he had lost. He died destitute but, like the Biblical Lazarus, his descendants rose again.

Family members made a fortune in New York real estate before turning to public service, with Henry Sr. becoming an Ambassador, Henry Jr. a confidant of FDR and Secretary of the Treasury, and Robert the longest-serving District Attorney in Manhattan’s history. We get a detailed look at New York's interlocking spheres of society, finance, and politics, and at how the Morgenthaus, as Jews, found acceptance despite the antisemitism of the time.  

Zabar's, New York's world-famous food emporium, is the achievement of another Jewish immigrant family.

Author Lori Zabar's grandparents, before they were a couple, fled pogroms in Russia (now Ukraine) and made their way to New York. Together they worked at a variety of small food stores before starting their own in 1934. From then on, Zabar's helped define the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The story here is one of hard work and eventual success in a family-run business, expanded to include dedicated non-family employees. The book also contains recipes, including two of my personal favorites - latkes and kugel. 

Rich in detailed scene-setting, Dan T. Carter’s biography of George Wallace is as much about the governor of Alabama as it is about everyone who attended his rallies and cast ballots with his name. I love biography as a medium for rethinking standard periodization, blurring boundaries, whether that be regional or cultural, among others, and using one person’s life to clarify sweeping societal trends.

This book explains, as much as possible, the extreme contradictions of one of the twentieth century’s most consequential firebrands. Carter demonstrates how unadulterated racism and commitment to white supremacy could be repackaged in the 1960s as an answer to a myriad of ills. In my opinion, Wallace is the prime example of the dangers posed by an ambitious politician who exploits divisiveness and weaponizes the worst of our inclinations. 

Lauren Denton continues leading me down a road filled with glory and unparalleled splendor. The authenticity and raw connectedness to her characters resonates on a level that transcends fiction.

Life is messy and uncertain. It’s the people we surround ourselves with and summoning the courage to open up that makes everything seem “right”. There’s no word for it, that feeling when everything settles into place because you’ve given yourself permission to be the person you truly are. But the entirety of this novel wraps around you with that message.

Find your path, with all its grooves, bumps, and ruts. There might be dusty fragments scattered in the breeze or thick mud that slows you down, but when it’s “your” road and choice, it’s undeniably the most glorious road you’ll travel.

Warren St. John spent a season with the University of Alabama fans who drive their RVs to every single Crimson Tide game, chronicling the lengths and depths of their obsessive fandom, the ways they build community and identity out of a bunch of kids playing a kids’ game... and this was before the Crimson Tide won six national championships in the last 15 years.

As I often tell my wife, an Alabama fan born and raised, “You people are insane.” Lucky for me I find their insanity captivating.

No can deny that pie is magic, but in this book, pies are literal magic: anyone who eats the fruit pies at the Blackbird Café will receive messages from their long-lost loved ones, thanks to the blackbirds who arrive at midnight and sing their dreams.

I adore the touch of magical realism in this gentle novel, and I can never read it without wanting a slice of pie and a glass of blackberry sweet tea. There’s something so quintessentially summery and wholesome about this book that you can practically taste it as you turn the pages.

Sara Brooks was one of seventeen children raised by landowning African American farmers in Alabama. Hers is a lively and evocative account of growing up on the land in a loving family and a harsh coming of age at the hands of an abusive man. Like many southern black women of the era, Brooks is able to escape the bleak conditions of her life by moving first to Mobile and then to Cleveland where she worked as a domestic, eventually acquiring her own home and reuniting with the children she had been forced to leave behind. Hers is a hopeful and richly textured story of resistance and resilience.

This picture book tells the story of Hamilton v. Alabama, a lesser-known U.S. Supreme Court ruling on behalf of Miss Mary Hamilton. Mary Hamilton, a Black civil rights activist arrested for her protests against segregation, demanded in a court hearing that she be addressed as "Miss Hamilton," rather than by her first name. This courtesy was extended to white people but often not to Blacks. When she refused to respond to "Mary," the judge held her in contempt. The NAACP took the case to the United States Supreme Court, which reversed in a 1964 order. Powerful poetic text and art by the talented mother-son Boston Weatherford team puts Mary's demand for respect into its historical and social context.