LITERARY MOBILE

This book, the brainchild of three Mobile writers, attempts to answer, from different perspectives, the questions we Mobiles are asking and have asked for three hundred years. Like standing too close to the trees and not seeing the forest, it is always hard to see your hometown as it really is. You are, at once, too critical and too defensive. You see, but you don't see. The changes may not be apparent, until one day, you ask "Who is this stranger?" What is Mobile really like? How does this city that seems to be so beautiful and yet so commonplace look to others? Is it just an ordinary small southern city like so many others? Or is it a place that nurtures creativity to the point that people say—and they do say, "It must be something in the water." If Mobile is different, how is this so—and why? This anthology enables us to see ourselves as others see us. The city of Mobile owes much to those who have compiled this review. We thank them for choosing the essays, stories, and poems that preserve the literature of a great southern city on the bay. Some of the authors featured in this book are Eugene Walter, William March, Eugene B. Sledge, Winston Groom, Jay Higginbotham, William Bartram, E. O. Wilson, Albert Murray, Kathryn Tucker Windham, Henry "Hank" Aaron, Mary M. Riser, Paul Hemphill, John Sledge, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, John Dos Passos, and many others.