Arts & Life

Allen Barra, a Birmingham native and the author of books on his kinsman Yogi Berra and "The Last Coach," Paul "Bear" Bryant, begins his book just where he should: at the scene of the inspiration for the creation of Rickwood Field.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

As all who know him will attest, Wayne Greenhaw is one of Alabama's best storytellers. In "Fighting the Devil in Dixie," Greenhaw shines the spotlight more on the determined lawyers who went after the flagrantly illegal, unconstitutional city and state ordinances and the Klan itself.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

It is unlikely that Roger Reid will soon quit his day job. Along with Doug Philips and Wendy Reed, he recently shared a regional Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Writing for the "Alabama in Space" episode of the very successful, long-running series "Discovering Alabama."

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

"Billion-Dollar Kiss" gives a long, knowledgeable insider's look into the lunatic bin known as the Writers Room, glimpsed in "30 Rock," and the process and huge pressures of a weekly show. The dialogue in "Fireworks over Toccoa" is unimpeachable and each scene is drawn as camera-ready for the folks at Hallmark or Lifetime as a seasoned television professional can make it.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

When a writer wishes to have a number of characters reveal their stories, some structuring device must be found. Through an omniscient narrator, DeMott makes the reader privy to the conversations at the actual meetings of the family and to the various private conversations of the participants.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

Naslund has tended to be over the years a kind of historical novelist. Although the novel is not science fiction, exactly, in order to have a chance, it needs to be read in a flexible, imaginative way.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2011 Alabama Public Radio

When a writer wishes to have a number of characters reveal their stories, some structuring device must be found. Chaucer has a group of pilgrims entertain each other on the road to Canterbury. Boccaccio puts a group of people in northern Italy in a country house to wait out the plague, and their stories constitute "The Decameron." Miles DeMott has chosen a different and thoroughly modern way.

By Don Noble

Audio ? 2010 Alabama Public Radio

We humans may enjoy this haunted holiday, but for our pets it can be intimidating, terrifying, even deadly.

By Mindy Norton

This is Halloween weekend, a scary time for all of us, but especially for our pets.

From their point of view, their routine is disrupted by the doorbell ringing and strange people showing up making lots of unusual noises and asking for candy and other goodies.

And when they act like pets, barking or hissing at these intruders, they're told to be quiet!

Dogs bark, yip, whine, even growl sometimes, but now they can tweet!

By Mindy Norton

Do you tweet?

That has become a familiar question as folks with computers and smart phones engage in social networking through Twitter, a website that allows them to post short messages that others can see. A message is referred to as a tweet.

L. J. (Larry) Davenport, Professor of Biology at Samford University, may be known to some for his engaging and humorous talks at the West Blocton Cahaba Lily Festival each spring, and to many more for his quarterly nature columns in Alabama Heritage magazine.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2010 Alabama Public Radio

The name Michele Norris will of course be familiar to NPR listeners. Often teamed with Steve Inskeep, Norris is a well-known NPR reporter. Usually these radio personalities are just voices to us, without even faces to go with them, never mind life stories, but Norris has written what is, more or less, a memoir.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2010 Alabama Public Radio

You can't swing a cavalry saber in these parts without striking someone who thinks of himself as a Civil War buff, an amateur expert on the War Between the States. Yet as Howard Jones reminds us in his Epilogue, "Historians of Blue and Gray diplomacy remain small in number particularly compared with the military and political historians [amateur and professional] of the conflict. Battles, generals and politicians all helped to determine the outcome of the war; but so did diplomats."

By Don Noble

Michael Knight of Mobile, Alabama is putting together a remarkably successful career, almost a model. He began with a volume of stories, Dogfight and Other Stories, and a novel, Divining Rod, both in 1998. There was then a second volume of stories, Goodnight, Nobody, in 2003 and a pair of novellas, The Holiday Season, in 2007. It is widely understood that the lead story in Goodnight, Nobody, entitled "Birdland," is being made into a feature film with Robert Duvall. Here's hoping.

By Don Noble

It might better have been titled "An Introduction to Albert Murray," because without doubt Murray, who is still alive at 94 and living in Manhattan, is the most important Alabama writer that few Alabamians know much about.

By Don Noble

Audio ?2010 Alabama Public Radio

Do not be put off by the academic-sounding title. This is a highly readable collection, accessible and of interest to the common reader.

It occurred to me as I was reading through Leaving Gee's Bend that in all the young adult books I have read in the last couple of years,...the authors have been men and their protagonists boys.

By Don Noble

It occurred to me as I was reading through Leaving Gee's Bend that in all the young adult books I have read in the last couple of years, by authors such as Brent Davis, Watt Key, Ted Dunagan and Peter Huggins, the authors have been men and their protagonists boys.