NAMED A "BEST BOOK" BY TRAVEL & LEISURE Like its predecessor, Weekend Getaways in Louisiana and Mississippi, Mary Fonseca's new, updated version presents the same wide choices for excursions that are designed for a two-to-three day stay. Covering cities large and small from Houma to Ruston, from Natchitoches to Lake Charles and in between, it includes Cajun music festivals, historic state capitals, antebellum plantations, swamp tours, outdoor adventures, and much more. Specific entries for lodgings, restaurants, and attractions list addresses, phone numbers, shopping, guide services, major annual events, and traveling instructions. Selected maps also help guide the way to overnight and three-day vacations in one of the Deep South's most interesting states. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mary Fonseca is a freelance writer who frequently speaks to various clubs, organizations, and travel groups. She has written several cover stories for Louisiana Life, including seven pieces of a series entitled "Say 'Yes' to Louisiana," which won first-place honors from the Press Club of New Orleans. Additionally, her writing and features have appeared in Americana, Nation's Business, Traveler, Vista USA, Mississippi, and other leading publications.

The most comprehensive guide available to Alabama's publicly accessible natural destinations

ALABAMA RIVERS, A CELEBRATION AND CHALLENGE invites you to travel down rivers and through time to encounter the rich human history and natural wonders that have defined Alabama. Along the way, you will celebrate an array of magnificent rivers filled with unique plants and animals, shaped over the ages by a remarkably diverse geology. You will appreciate how rivers have served people from the first Paleo-Indian settlements to the present. Accept the challenge to restore and protect our rivers for their economic, cultural, and ecological benefits, but most of all because it is the right thing to do.

Your Travel Destination. Your Home. Your Home-To-Be. Birmingham Festivals. Architectural gems. Green spaces. Friendly faces. The Magic City. A special kind of place. • A personal, practical perspective for travelers and residents alike • Comprehensive listings of attractions, restaurants, and accommodations • How to live & thrive in the area—from recreation to relocation • Countless details on shopping, arts & entertainment, and children’s activities

Through the Hoop To arc a jump shot through the orange rim . . . to tap in a rebound . . . putting the ball through the hoop represents a transcendent moment in basketball for player, team, and crowd. Such a moment exists in every sport. But to enjoy it, fans and athletes alike are often forced through other kinds of hoops. Sports can be violent, lonely, poetic, painful, uplifting. It can breed fitness or injury, sufficiency or dependence, pride or prejudice, friendship or hostility. When does the discipline of sport become dangerous obedience? When does self-mastery become self-aggrandizement? When does athletic activity cease to be empowering for the participants and fans to become an exercise of power over us? Answers to such questions are hard to find. Sports, unlike most topics previously addressed in special issues of Southern Exposure — labor, women, folk life, health, prisons — has never had a network of informed progressives working outside the established channels, posing critical questions, offering insightful direction for our thinking and doing. Trusted commentators and friends who know where they stand and why with regard to other central aspects of our culture shy away from giving serious thought to sport. As a result, many of us are left with personal confusions brought on by alternating experiences of frustration and fulfillment: How do we talk about a subject that on the one hand can be so easily criticized for abuses and on the other hand remains so compelling? How do we effectively criticize the sports establishment that manages ACC basketball or NFL football when we find ourselves glued to the set at playoff time?