Whole Heart of Zen
From The Zen Site, reviewed by Ned Mudd       

Lighthouse Trivia
From the August 2001 issue of The Bookwatch
Lighthouse Trivia is a delightful and compact 83-page book filled with a wealth of 145 distinctive facts about American lighthouses presented in a multiple choice Q&A format. Readers of all ages can test their knowledge (and that of their friends and family!) of lighthouse lore while learning the answers to such questions as where was the first document lighthouse in history; which lighthouse has a ghost that screams “keep away” in Portuguese; what an Argand lap is; which U.S. lighthouse is the most isolated; and what a “Texas Tower” is. Fun and informative, Lighthouse Trivia is a “must” for all American lighthouse buffs.

Lighthouse Families
Lighthouse Families is the winner of the 2006 Foundation for Coast Guard History Book Award in the Lighthouse History category. The judges called it "a refreshing look at lighthouse history, covering a specific aspect of lighthouse life usually reserved for add-on chapters in books on the general topic."

I’m standing in my kitchen with one leg propped on the stove and my arms stretched straight above my head.

Scout, my dog, is looking at me funny. It’s 7 a.m., and neither of us has had our coffee.

Soon as I figure out how to get my leg down, I plan to brew a pot. I glance at the book I’ve propped open on the kitchen counter. “Remember to hold on to a surface as you transition out of this pose,” the instructions warn. I lower my arms, grab a chair for support and gingerly return my leg to the floor.

I am in the midst of my morning cup of yoga in a 15-minute routine of stretches and poses designed by Birmingham author, actress and yoga instructor Jane Goad Trechsel. The routine is the centerpiece of her new book, “A Morning Cup of Yoga” (Crane Hill Publishers, $10.95).

This is my first attempt at this ancient mind-body exercise. So far, my favorite things about Jane’s yoga routine are that you don’t need special shoes or clothes (I’m wearing my pink flannel “I Love Lucy” PJs and rubber-soled socks), and you can do it in privacy (meaning your neighbors won’t be subjected to your flabby, half-naked self jogging alongside the morning traffic).

Jane designed her book for people like me, who are a bit shy about public displays of exercise, yet are eager to reap the workout benefits. “Morning Cup of Yoga’s” stretches and poses can be done standing or sitting, and they were designed to utilize countertops and appliances most of us have in our kitchens. The book has illustrations for each pose and comes with an audio CD featuring the author’s quiet coaching.

The best testimony I’ve seen to yoga’s benefits is Jane Trechsel herself, who, at 64, looks young enough to be her own daughter.

“I do have a little arthritis, and yoga helps me get the kinks out,” she says. Jane, known to local theater-goers for her acting work at Birmingham Festival Theater, first tried yoga in 1967, “I read about it in Parade magazine how all the actresses in LA and New York were doing it. I thought, ‘This is for me.’”

She took a class at YWCA and, a decade later, became a serious student and then a teacher, eventually traveling to study with yoga masters such as Ramanand Patel and Rodney Yee.

Jane drew from a variety of yoga forms for her “Morning Cup of Yoga” routine, designed for all ages and levels of fitness especially for folks who’ve grown a bit stiff from years of sitting on the couch. Her book also serves as a yoga primer.

Simply Beautiful Flowers
From the January/February 2006 issue of Foreword Magazine

Simply Beautiful Flowers, by Dorothy McDaniel, is a small and practical jewel of a book (1-57587-234-9) from Crane Hill Publishers. The binding is spiral—allowing users to flop it open next to their work—and it comes with a succinct and helpful thirty-seven-minute instructional DVD tucked into the back pocket. The chapters begin with the basics and, rather than loading up on the detail, concentrate on a handful of classic ways to display fresh flowers in categories such as tabletop arrangements, Biedermeier arrangements, and bulb arrangements. A handy chart outlining seasonal availability for fresh flowers, quick descriptions, average life of the bloom, and traditional floral meaning (red rose = love; pink rose = friendship) is an especially helpful device. The “Simply Beautiful Secrets,” interspersed throughout, are quick-tip boxes of information and complememnt the section called “Dorothy’s &A” at the back cf the book. McDaniel owns a floral business and has been sharing flower design as a speaker, guest demonstrator, and in the pages of magazines for more than twenty-five years; her expertise is freshly displayed in this, her first book.

The Good Book and Good Business
As reviewed by Graham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the October 1, 2006 issue of Library Journal

Hutto's book is one of a stream of titles that address the life of the Christian in the most worldly of contexts—the workplace. Specifically, Hutto, himself a CPA, attempts to reconcile the necessities of business life with Christian ethics or, indeed, with any ethics at all. His success in this endeavor is understandably mixed—in conclusion, he has to concede the manifold failures of many “Christian” businesspeople, including himself, to live up to standards, but to him, this does not negate the necessity of trying. A number of readers may take an interest in this title; librarians should watch for this and other titles in this subgenre.

Dixie Dictionary
From the March 2003 issue of FiftyPlus, reviewed by F.T. Rea

“…Howard’s little dictionary actually goes further than merely defining words; it also combines a smattering of regional history and commentary, punctuated tastefully with dashes of dry wit. … The book’s contents run from the useful to the curious, providing an entertaining mix of nostalgic terms of speech native Richmonders heard as children and an introduction to exotic vernacular from other times and places.”

“Of Howard’s book, veteran Washington-based columnist and PBS commentator Charles McDowell offered, ‘Thomas Howard’s Dixie Dictionary is a marvelous mix of cultural scholarship, the folklore of regional language, and some insights that might even make Yankees fell happier in contemporary times.”

Guests Behind the Barbed Wire
From the October 2007 edition of The Alabama Review by Matthias Reiss of the University of Exeter

Not being an economist, I can't argue with that statement. I do wonder, however, how many Advertiser readers realize that Aliceville has already been home to one very substantial federal prison facility.

"Guests Behind the Barbed Wire" is the story of the largest German POW camp in the United States during World War II. Written by Ruth Beaumont Cook, a Birmingham resident, this is not the printed version of "The Great Escape,""Stalag 17" or any other WWII POW movie you might have seen.

With a subtitle of "German POWs in America: A True Story of Hope and Friendship," this book doesn't focus on the mistreatment of Allied prisoners overseas. Cook does juxtapose the sometimes horrific hardships endured by captured U.S. servicemen with the generally humane treatment given the German prisoners at Aliceville -- but as a way of giving context to the story, not for propaganda or political purposes.

In fact, one of the book's rather amazing accomplishments, given current events, is its steadfast refusal to deviate from its stated heart and purpose: to present the story of the intersection of the lives of more than 1,000 Aliceville residents and soldiers and those of the 6,000-plus POWs who passed through Camp Aliceville.

It's been said that "the devil is in the details," but in this book, that's where the beauty is found as well. In this case, it's the small picture, not the big one, that illustrates both differences and similarities between captor and prisoner.

Earline Lewis, a local girl who worked in the Quartermaster's office, was in charge of calculating food supply orders for the POW mess halls. The Army's orders were that the German POWs were to be fed as well as the American soldiers, so, among other things, Earline requisitioned plenty of corn on the cob.

What Earline, a "shy young secretary from Carrollton," didn't realize was that the Germans had no idea what to do with the corn: "They knew what the corn was, but back in their country, it was fed only to livestock like pigs and certainly not to human beings."

Anxious to get rid of the corn without seeming ungracious or overfed, the Germans came up with a universal human solution for garbage: they buried it -- at least until the next summer when it sprouted.

"Guests Behind the Barbed Wire" is one of those rare books that encouraged me, as the reader, to stop and ponder what I'd read. It's not confusing, or deep, or controversial. It's just a book that presents the nature of war, peace and human dignity in a way that each of us, regardless of political persuasion, can understand.

This isn't a book to be tossed in a beach bag or used to simply kill time at an airport. This is the kind of book best kept at your bedside or near your favorite porch swing, where you can slow down your life and savor it as you read.

Susan Turley is an attorney and former newspaper reporter who lives in
Millbrook.

From the July 17, 2007 edition of The Tuscaloosa News BOOK REVIEW: Author recounts days of POW camp in Aliceville by Don Noble
Alabamians, especially west Alabamians, have always known to some degree that during World War II there was a prisoner-of-war camp in Aliceville, in Pickens County. Perhaps because the camp was entirely demolished after the war, down to the last brick, and there is nothing there to see, the Aliceville camp has faded in people¹s consciousness. There have been, over the years, some newspaper articles and a documentary by Alabama Public Television, and there have been a couple of reunions of American guards and German prisoners, but mostly the camp has faded into the past.

Now, Ruth Beaumont Cook has done a splendid job of investigating the story of the camp, interviewing those who are still alive and documenting the historical record. Her book is thoroughly researched and intelligently written and ensures that the camp will not be forgotten.

Cook begins with a description of the sleepy town of Aliceville, hot in the summer, dusty, in places swampy and complete with mosquitoes. The Parker farm of 400 acres, which was taken by the Army Corps of Engineers, along with another 400 belonging to six other sellers, was the site for the camp.

The U.S. Army, in late 1942, had begun the North Africa Campaign, and as German prisoners were captured there, it was deemed impractical and dangerous to keep them in Great Britain. By the summer of 1943, 72 camps had been built in the U.S., and by mid-1945 there were 150 camps and 340³branch" or work camps.

Natives of Pickens County had at first thought the prisoners were to be Japanese, and were relieved when they turned out to be Germans. In a misspelling bound to fascinate any Freudian, the Pickens County newspaper called the place an ³interment," not internment, camp throughout the war, never correcting the spelling.

By May 1943, Aliceville was a large camp, with 400 buildings holding a maximum of 6,000 prisoners, with 1,000 U. S. military personnel. There would
be a total of 250,000 captured Germans and Italians from North Africa.

The facts in this volume are sufficient to hold the reader¹s attention, but the anecdotes are priceless. Prisoners in transport ships approaching New York City were astonished to see skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty intact. They had been told the city had been heavily bombed. When they were taken by trains to Aliceville and other camps in Oklahoma, Mississippi and even Colorado, journeys of three to five days, they told one another that the Americans were taking them in circles. No country could possibly be this big.

A couple of things about the camp that I found surprising were, one, that our POW camps followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter. The German prisoners got the same food, shelter, medical care and number of square feet of living space as the military police officers. This was done in hopes that the Germans would treat U.S. prisoners similarly.

And two, inside the camps, true believer Nazis, usually NCO¹s, often terrorized non-Nazi German soldiers, and some sorting and sifting had to occur, putting the hard-core Nazis in one place and conscripted, nonpolitical or resisting soldiers in another.

The camp was not a bad place to be at all. The prisoners had bands, organized musical evenings, wrote poetry and painted, ran English and French classes, put on plays, and even had a camp newspaper. On April 20, prisoners -- in the United States -- were allowed to celebrate Hitler¹s birthday. German prisoners captured at the Russian front were not so lucky. Of the 100,000 taken by the Russians at Stalingrad, only 5,000 lived to return home at the end of the war.

Only a couple of Aliceville prisoners were killed trying to escape. It seems some prisoners thought Columbus, Miss., was Columbus, Ohio, and confused York, with New York City. When they realized how far they were from anywhere, attempts stopped.

Once Allied troops had entered Germany and were liberating German stalags and especially after the discovery of the death camps, conditions got a lot worse in places like Aliceville. American anger at how badly our soldiers had been treated was enormous. I was, in fact, surprised to learn that many German POWs were put on labor battalions here and in Belgium, France and Britain, in America they were mainly used in agriculture and logging, but in Europe they were used in mines and in construction. There was a huge labor shortage everywhere, and many Germans did not get home for a year or two after the surrender.

This is a long book, 562 pages of text and 61 pages of notes. It is filled with mini-biographies of German soldiers, American MPs and Aliceville residents and can seem a little slow in places, but it is worth the time. This job will not need to be done again, and, most importantly, this story has not been lost.

This review was originally broadcast on Alabama Public Radio. Don Noble, professor emeritus of English at the University of Alabama, can be reached at nobledr@yahoo.com.

From the Alabama Writer's Forum First Draft, Reviewed by Jim Reed
The day a person gives up on the Geneva Convention is the day a person gives up on the human race.
—Sarah Vowell

Ruth Beaumont Cook’s amazing and entertainingly detailed account of the tiny town of Aliceville, Alabama, during World War II is at once a highly personal narrative, an engrossing true tale of heroism and extreme kindnesses, and a textbook about a time and place that must not be forgotten.

More than 250,000 captured German soldiers were incarcerated in the U.S. during the War, and this is one small part of that surprisingly forgotten period in the early 1940s. Cook’s attention to the humanity behind a larger cataclysmic period of history keeps the reader’s feet on the ground, while reminding us that there is poetry to be found wherever one searches.

Guests Behind the Barbed Wire relates how the residents of Aliceville reacted to a benevolent wartime invasion by thousands of German soldiers, how the military personnel-turned-prison guards learned that soldiers can be noble and kind simultaneously, and how it is possible for a nation’s leadership to carry out a mission of peace in the midst of horrendous warfare. This is the story of just one of many American towns that had to come face to face with an unarmed enemy, and how restraint and firmness and outright goodwill saved the day.

The late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., himself a POW during the Dresden holocaust, observed, "Has any psychological experiment yielded a more delightful suggestion than this one: that there is a part of the mind without ambition or information, which nonetheless is expert on what is beautiful?"

Ruth Beaumont Cook has done us all a favor. In the midst of twenty-first century ethnic cleansings, civil wars, genocides, and flagrant disregard for the Geneva Accords, she has reminded us that beauty and friendship can be found under the worst of circumstances. Maybe that’s what keeps us going.

Jim Reed is editor of Birmingham Art Journal and owner of Jim Reed Books and the Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham.

From Roger Mansell, Director of the Center For Research, Allied POWS Under the Japanese
Once every decade, a masterpiece of history is written. The aphorism that in war, "the victors write the story", often precludes the experiences, beliefs and motivations of the vanquished. Even more rare is the story of those who became prisoners of war. Historian Ruth B. Cook has created such a gem; telling the story of the Germans soldiers taken as prisoner in North Africa then transported to America. Cook brings these experiences to life through the words and visions of numerous prisoners, the American guards and the townspeople, young and old, of Aliceville Alabama. We could not praise it more highly... an utterly fascinating and delightful read.

From Barbara Schmitter Heisler, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Gettysburg College
This careful study provides an excellent historical narrative of the people and events during the Second World War in the small town of Aliceville, Alabama, the location of one of the largest prisoner of war camps holding up to 6,000 German POWs. Her study is more than just the history of the camp, the German POWs brought to the United States beginning in the fall of 1942 and the history of the American military personnel and civilians who came to Aliceville to work at the camp, as guards, administrators, medical personnel, typists and cooks. It is also the history of a small Southern town and its people, transformed by the war and the camp.

Based on interviews with participants, former German POWs, local townspeople, and individuals, both military and civilian who moved to Aliceville during this period to work at the camp, newspaper records and the archives of the Aliceville Museum, Beaumont Cook weaves a sensitive portrayal of the people and events in Aliceville. Despite the fact that the initial contact between the German POWs and their American captors was based on fear, mutual ignorance and misconceptions, both parties came to recognize that “enemies are human too.” Indeed more than fifty years after the war, many former German POWs fondly remember their time in Aliceville and some have continued to return there for reunions several times.

Beyond vividly portraying the experiences of the individuals, Beaumont Cook does not loose sight of the larger legal framework that under girded the American prisoner of war program, the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War. It is a stark reminder of the continued relevance of the Geneva Convention to protect us from the temptation of cruelty and revenge against our enemies and to affirm their and our continued humanity. In short, Ruth Beaumont Cook’s book is more than a good read it is also thought-provoking.

From Robert D. Billinger Jr., Professor of History, Wingate University, Wingate, NC
Author of Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State [about German POWs in Florida]
Ruth Beaumont Cook has written a “peoples’ history” of the small town of Aliceville, Alabama, and its experiences with one of the earliest and largest German POW camps in America. Impressive and emotive details of the daily lives of Alabama locals, guards, and POWs, and a celebration of sixty-plus years of mutual good will-in-the-making, characterize this sensitive portrayal of a small town in Pickens County where Americans and Germans learned that enemies are human.

From Dr. Allen T. Cronenberg, retired Associate Professor of History, Auburn University, Author of Forth to the Mighty Conflict: Alabama and World War II
Aliceville, Alabama, is unique among the many towns in the American south and southwest that housed internment camps for German POWs during World War II. None is more committed as a community to recover, preserve and honor its wartime memories.

Ruth Cook’s book artfully recounts the lives of some of the thousands of German POWs behind the wire at Aliceville, their camp guards, and the townspeople of Aliceville. Quite unexpectedly, there emerged a growing recognition and respect for a shared humanity even among enemies. Reunions in recent decades that have attracted former POWs, camp guards and surviving townspeople—as well as their children and grandchildren—are a moving testimony to a mutual respect that developed.

Ruth Cook does more than narrate the fascinating history of a POW camp between 1943 and 1946. Through numerous anecdotes gleaned from interviews, diaries, newspaper accounts and other contemporary sources, she provides insights into the culture, society and economy of West Alabama and into the small community of American and Germans whose intertwined lives were molded by wartime experiences.

A moving account of wartime memories and friendships forged by German POWs, their camp guards, and townspeople of Aliceville, Alabama. For German POWs it was the memories of hot, humid Alabama summers; tormenting mosquitoes; the kindnesses of people they encountered behind and outside the wire; an unimaginable abundance of food including real coffee, the never before eaten peanut butter that stuck to the roofs of their mouths, even beer in the POW canteens; the camp newspaper and other cultural and sport opportunities; and educational class-work that counted toward degrees. For Americans, it was the realization that most POWs were not all monstrous Nazis but quite ordinary boys and men who were thankful to be alive and relieved to be treated respectfully according to the rules of international wartime law, and whose mothers, wives, and children grieved their absence.

Contrary to what most Americans might think, the status of German POWs actually grew worse after war ended in the spring of 1945. Revelations of atrocities in German concentration camps and extreme hardships suffered by American POWs in German hands, led toward the end of the war to increased privation for German POWs in Allied camps. Few Americans realize that many German POWs were turned over to British, French and other Allied countries where they performed forced labor for months before returning to civilian life and their families.

A remarkable contribution to the history of Alabama in World War II.

Fascinating and detailed account of German prisoners of war in Alabama during World War II and their relationships with their American captors and with the townspeople of Alabama.

Splendid account of the unique relationship of German POWs and the town of Aliceville during World War II.

From Arnold Krammer, Professor, Texas A&M University
Author of Nazi Prisoners of War in America and Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees
This is local history at its best. Ms. Cook has explored the wartime world of rural Aliceville, Alabama, in encyclopedic detail. It is the history of a generation, written with accuracy and depth that any American camp guard, local resident, or for that matter, German prisoner would recognize. From that day in August in 1942, when the appraiser from the Federal Land Bank swept in to Aliceville to purchase the Parker family’s 400 acres for $29,300, none of their lives would ever be the same. On June 1, 1943, several thousand German soldiers were marched from the train to their new camp, as the folks from Aliceville lined the road to gawk. The adventure continued inside the wire and on the streets of Aliceville and in the lives of everybody involved. Local historian Ruth Cook offers the reader a complete world in Aliceville.

From Jim Reed, well-known rare book dealer and columnist
Occasionally, during the worst of times, America gets it right. Ruth Beaumont Cook documents one of those bright, shining periods, in this exquisitely detailed and compassionate portrait of enemies who found a way to get along with one another while much of the world was in chaos. Every history buff, each historian, every citizen desiring better times, would benefit from a close reading of this book.