On growing up in the American South of the 1960s—an all-American white boy—son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The Birmingham News. "My dad was a Methodist preacher and his dad was a Methodist preacher," writes John Archibald. "It goes all the way back on both sides of my family. When I am at my best, I think it comes from that sermon place." Everything Archibald knows and believes about life is "refracted through the stained glass of the Southern church. It had everything to do with people. And fairness. And compassion." In Shaking the Gates of Hell, Archibald asks: Can a good person remain silent in the face of discrimination and horror, and still be a good person? Archibald had seen his father, the Rev. Robert L. Archibald, Jr., the son and grandson of Methodist preachers, as a moral authority, a moderate and a moderating force during the racial turbulence of the '60s, a loving and dependable parent, a forgiving and attentive minister, a man many Alabamians came to see as a saint. But was that enough? Even though Archibald grew up in Alabama in the heart of the civil rights movement, he could recall few words about racial rights or wrongs from his father's pulpit at a time the South seethed, and this began to haunt him. In this moving and powerful book, Archibald writes of his complex search, and of the conspiracy of silence his father faced in the South, in the Methodist Church and in the greater Christian church. Those who spoke too loudly were punished, or banished, or worse. Archibald's father was warned to guard his words on issues of race to protect his family, and he did. He spoke to his flock in the safety of parable, and trusted in the goodness of others, even when they earned none of it, rising through the ranks of the Methodist Church, and teaching his family lessons in kindness and humanity, and devotion to nature and the Earth. Archibald writes of this difficult, at times uncomfortable, reckoning with his past in this unadorned, affecting book of growth and evolution.

The Recollections is a rare commodity - a personal chronicle of life in eighteenth century Virginia. Written to preserve memories of his parents for later generations of the family, the Recollections paints a vivid picture of events of John Mason's boyhood and his father's plantation. Gunston Hall, long considered an architectural gem, survives today as testimony to George Mason's intellect and taste. Along with John Mason's words, photographs in the volume provide glimpses of the mansion George Mason built between 1755 and 1759.

This book will captivate readers interested in the legacy of the Civil War, the role of military veterans after they return to civilian life, and the fight against racism in America. Steven A. Goldman looks at the contentious post-Civil War era from the perspective of that special breed, Union soldiers who lived by the bayonet and survived to carry on the fight for equality in the decades to come. He explores the root causes of this historic contest, the changing attitudes of northern servicemen with respect to the Civil War’s purpose, and the psychological effect of involvement in what, from hindsight, was an unfinished work in the cause of freedom and equality for all Americans. Relying on unpublished letters and other primary sources, Goldman uses the veterans’ words and actions to depict their steadfast struggle to preserve the memory and understanding of why the war was fought, and to confront the implications of remembrance, commemoration and reconciliation for America's future.

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