Alabama Curiosities

Discover Alabama's curious underside with this oddly entertaining little guide! Travelers with a taste for the bizarre, tacky, and hilarious can visit the Coon Dog Cemetery, learn about the cattle-mutilation mystery, view the world's largest boll weevil, and sip Kudzu Tea. Only a true Southerner could capture the essence of these and other authentic Alabama phenomena, and Andy Duncan does his home state proud.

Discover Nebraska's curious underside with this oddly entertaining little guide! Travelers with a taste for the bizarre, tacky, and hilarious can visit the Avoca Quack-Off, learn about the inland Linoma Lighthouse, view a Roller Skating Museum, and pay a visit to the world's largest covered wagon. Only true Cornhuskers could capture the essence of these and other authentic Nebraska phenomena, and Rick Yoder and David Harding do their home state proud.

Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Hawkeye State has to offer!

Amazing Alabama: A Potpourri of Fascinating Facts, Tall Tales and Storied Stories chronicles a brief history of the state, famous personages associated with Alabama, a discussion of state firsts, unique occurrences, antiquated laws and other fascinating topics.

From Jasper to Selma to Hoover, central Alabama is bursting at the seams with unique stories and legendary characters. Read about the Goat Man, the famous wandering traveler who wrestled a bear, narrowly avoided being lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue and later became an ordained preacher. Learn the story of the Alabama White Thang, a seven-foot-tall creature covered in white hair that has appeared all over the region. Be charmed by Fred, the Rockford town dog that became everyone's best friend and had his fifteen minutes of fame on Animal Planet. Author Beverly Crider brings the most bizarre facets of the Alabama spirit to life with dozens of strange stories in central Alabama.

The definitive collection of Georgia's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things, for Georgia residents and anyone else who enjoys local humor and trivia with a twist.

Folk art is as varied as it is indicative of person and place, informed by innovation and grounded in cultural context. The variety and versatility of 300 American folk artists is captured in this collection of informative and thoroughly engaging essays. American Folk Art: A Regional Reference offers a collection of fascinating essays on the life and work of 300 individual artists. Some of the men and women profiled in these two volumes are well known, while others are important practitioners who have yet to receive the notice they merit. Because many of the artists in both categories have a clear identity with their land and culture, the work is organized by geographical region and includes an essay on each region to help make connections visible. There is also an introductory essay on U.S. folk art as a whole. Those writing about folk art to date tend to view each artist as either traditional or innovative. One of the major contributions of this work is that it demonstrates that folk artists more often exhibit both traits; they are grounded in their cultural context and creative in the way they make work their own. Such insights expand the study of folk art even as they readjust readers' understanding of who folk artists are.