Writer Barnes tells the story of a corrupt, crime-ridden city, examining events that unfolded during 1916-1955. Phenix City had been a 19th-century refuge from law enforcement for 120 years until three men in succession challenged the status quo. To reconstruct the story the author draws on notes and private papers of the principals and investigators; depositions, trial transcripts, and court records; daily newspaper coverage; and transcripts of wire-tapped recordings of the city's gamblers and politicians. No index or bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The assassination of Albert Patterson.

"This is a great book about a great American hero. It was my privilege to portray Sheriff Lamar Potts in the movie Murder in Coweta County." -Johnny Cash "A thrilling experience for me." -Andy Griffith "One of the best crime trial recreations ever written." -Chicago Sun-Times Murder in Coweta County received the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Special Award as an outstanding fact-crime study by the Mystery Writers of America and has been used in sociology and criminal law courses at schools and universities throughout the United States. Filmed as a CBS television movie starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith in 1983, the story gained even more acclaim and is still available on video and DVD. This book is a detailed and chillingly realistic reconstruction of the brutal murder of tenant farmer Wilson Turner that took place in rural Georgia in 1948 and the brilliant investigation that eventually brought the murderer-a powerful county "lord"-to justice with a conviction that set legal precedents. When that county "lord," John Wallace, crushed Turner's skull with a sawed-off shotgun, he did not even give a passing thought to being prosecuted by the police in his "feudal kingdom" of Meriwether County. However, Wallace had unknowingly crossed the county line into Coweta County, which was under the jurisdiction of the tenacious Sheriff Lamar Potts. Sheriff Potts emerges from the incident as a classic American lawman, honest and unintimidated, a man of action and integrity determined to see justice done.

Before Las Vegas, there was Phenix City, Alabama--the original sin city. Once the sprawling capital of the Muscogee Indian Empire, the region took a sinister turn when a holy war engulfed the southern territories in 1812, leading to the murder of the infamous Chief William McIntosh. Later, atrocities continued at Fort Mitchell, the killing grounds for early Georgia politicians who fought to the death over rival politics and bitter feuds. By the 1950s, Phenix City was home to the "Dixie Mafia," and crime and corruption ruled over the little riverfront city. Take a walk with author Faith Serafin as she travels through the darkest recesses of Phenix City's past.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Southern sexuality,Sex and Sexuality in Modern Southern Culture offers twelve essays that explore the history of the expression and embodiment of sexuality in the context of the broad cultural and social changes the South underwent in the decades following World War II. Contributors examine prostitution networks in the region, interracial sex in the civil rights movement, Freaknik and black male sexuality, queer Florida, conservative women and sexuality in the 1980s and 1990s, and the fiction of Larry Brown. No other collection of essays or narrative history attempts an overview of sex and sexualities in the American South in recent decades. More than simply an overview, however, this volume also seeks to provide models for further scholarship.

The first and only historical account of the John Patterson administration