History of Alabama by Albert James Pickett

They are conveniently placed in the borders of the pages, allowing for easy scanning while still enabling the reader to enjoy the text as originally presented. Requiring years of intensive research, the annotations correct longstanding errors and serve as a reference on the events mentioned in the book themselves. James Pate has thankfully undertaken the daunting task of annotating this iconic volume. Highly respected professor emeritus of history at University of West Alabama Dr.

And a rollicking tale it is, covering in adventurous style the entrada of De Soto through the establishment of the state as a part of the American union. Of course, Pickett did not have benefit of over a century and a half of serious academic inquiry or the numerous archives and libraries available to today’s writers, and consequently filled in gaps in the story as best he could. Derived to some degree from interviews with participants in some of the state’s landmark events but also relying on some serious research, the book made the most of the sources then available.

Reissued a few years later and almost continually in print since that time, it remains a foundational text on Alabama’s past despite the mounting evidence that it contains several small errors of fact and some omissions that left incomplete some of the stories it told. Albert James Pickett’s two-volume History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period has been a vital reference source on Alabama history since it original publication in 1851.

History of Alabama by Albert James Pickett