The dynamic city of Smyrna, Georgia, situated a scant fifteen miles northwest of Atlanta, has a fascinating history. In July 1864, two significant battles were fought within the confines of present-day Smyrna as General Sherman's Federal juggernaut converged on the "Gateway City" of Atlanta. The town was incorporated in 1872 with a population of fewer than three hundred residents and high expectations that rapid suburban development would ensue. It was the coming to the area of the aeronautics industry in the post-World War II period that finally generated sustained growth. Then, in the 1990s, the city reinvented itself through an aggressive urban renewal program spearheaded by its dynamic mayor, Max Bacon, and a progressive-minded city council. Join author William P. Marchione, PhD, as he recounts the fascinating history that created Smyrna.

This text draws on interviews with almost 200 people, both black and white, who worked for, or actively resisted, the freedom movement in Georgia. Beginning before and continuing after the years of direct action protest in the 1960s, the book makes clearthe exhorbitant cost of racial oppression.

"Atlanta and Environs" is, in every way, an exhaustive history of the Atlanta Area from the time of its settlement in the 1820s through the 1970s. Volumes I and II, together more than two thousand pages in length, represent a quarter century of research by their author, Franklin M. Garrett--a man called "a walking encyclopedia on Atlanta history" by the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution." With the publication of Volume III, by Harold H. Martin, this chronicle of the South's most vibrant city incorporates the spectacular growth and enterprise that have characterized Atlanta in recent decades. The work is arranged chronologically, with a section devoted to each decade, a chapter to each year. Volume I covers the history of Atlanta and its people up to 1880--ranging from the city's founding as "Terminus" through its Civil War destruction and subsequent phoenixlike rebirth. Volume II details Atlanta's development from 1880 through the 1930s--including occurrences of such diversity as the development of the Coca-Cola Company and the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. Taking up the city's fortunes in the 1940s, Volume III spans the years of Atlanta's greatest growth. Tracing the rise of new building on the downtown skyline and the construction of Hartsfield International Airport on the city's perimeter, covering the politics at City Hall and the box scores of Atlanta's new baseball team, recounting the changing terms of race relations and the city's growing support of the arts, the last volume of "Atlanta and Environs" documents the maturation of the South's preeminent city.

Named for the famous Spanish explorer who was said to have discovered the Fountain of Youth, Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue began as a simple country road that conveyed visitors to the famous healing springs. Now, few motorists realize that the avenue, one of Atlanta's major commuter thoroughfares, was a prestigious residential street in Victorian Atlanta, home to mayors and millionaires. An economic turn in the twentieth century transformed the avenue into a crime-ridden commercial corridor, but in recent years, Atlantans have rediscovered the street's venerable architecture and storied history. Join local historian Sharon Foster Jones on a vivid tour of the avenue - from picnics by the springs in hoopskirts and Atlanta Crackers baseball to the Fox Theatre and the days when Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Al Capone lodged in the esteemed hotels lining this magnificent avenue.

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