After a couple of drinks at a Twelfth Night party several years ago, I allowed the eminent historian and popular professor Hubert McAlexander to recruit me for a book about Athens history. Hubert wanted me to replicate a photographic spread I had done years ago in the Athens Observer, and that assignment sounded simple enough. Thus did I fall among a hardcore group of local historians, preservationists, documentarians, collectors, researchers, authenticators, renovators, house movers, designers and writers who were on a first-name basis with past Athenians and their structures, talked of them as if they were still here and made you think they just might be.
My photo project morphed into an enormous chapter on Prince Avenue far beyond my ability even to conceive and was taken over by more experienced hands. Meanwhile, in regular meetings of the conspirators, the book increasingly assumed a life of its own, adding chapters as it went.
Now, what came to be known as “Our Book” is finally here. The Tangible Past in Athens, Georgia is an invaluable smorgasbord of Athens history, a potpourri of memorabilia, as if, once it got started, this book made all these knowledgeable people pull out everything they know about Athens and put it on display in one gigantic yard sale of Attic items. Those conversations around the table at the meetings of the book committee came alive and manifested themselves in print and picture, projecting the riches in those minds onto the page: 656 pages; over 700 (!) photographs, most of which you have never seen; 18 essays in a 9×12 hardcover volume beautifully designed by Ken Storey, costing $55 plus tax and available in plenty of time for Christmas.
As Hubert’s health forced him to ease back from command of the legions working on the book, Charlotte Thomas Marshall took over, bringing to bear skills honed through work on her massive Oconee Hill Cemetery of Athens, Georgia, Vol. 1 and other books and articles about Athens architectural history. Charlotte has remained dedicated to the eventual appearance and success of The Tangible Past, a task that has grown along with the book until she has thrown herself into it day and night, turning her home into publication-central, from which she has gently directed her team.
You may not know your historical players, but these perpetrators make up a local-history dream team. The names on the cover are those of Amy Andrews, Patricia Cooper, Gary Doster, Lee Epting, the late Mary Anne Hodgson, Milton Leathers, Charlotte Thomas Marshall, Hubert McAlexander, Sam Thomas, Mary Bondurant Warren and my own. Solidly behind these, however are so many people like Theresa Flynn and the Hargrett Library’s Steven Brown, who know where the facts are buried and have repeatedly extracted photos and articles and confirmed quotes and generally enriched the result. Moreover, people all over town and throughout the country have generously sent in photographs and information from far-flung family files.
The book will be available for purchase at four upcoming reading/signing events: “Alumni Night” at the UGA bookstore, 5–7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21; at the Russell Special Collections Library on campus 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4; then there’s a Junior League reception and signing from 3–5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7 at the Taylor-Grady House; and the Athens-Clarke County Library’s “Café au Libris” will feature the book at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14.
The Tangible Past in Athens, Georgia is also on sale at these locations: ADD Drugs, Appointments at Five, Athens Welcome Center, Aurum Studios, Avid Bookshop, Classic Galleries (Watkinsville), Thomas R. R. Cobb House, Cullen & Company in The Bottleworks, Harry’s BBQ, Heery’s Too, The Olive Basket in the Bottleworks and the UGA Bookstore, among others.
The Tangible Past in Athens, Georgia is not a history of Athens. Rather, it is a conversation among people who care about our city and how it came to be, people who have made it their business to poke around and find evidence left by those who have preceded us here. This work, this expansive, unending labor of love will thrill you and will put you in touch with our past.
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