Book Description

"In 1971, Jim Brown moved to Birmingham with his young family to start his first full-time teaching job at Samford University. Within days, he was fishing on the Cahaba River; soon, the entire Brown family was regularly exploring the river's twists and turns and the myriad creatures living there. A European historian by training, Brown began to broaden his areas of expertise to fulfill the range of his teaching responsibilities. As his intellectual horizons expanded, Brown quickly became fascinated with the history, culture, and environment of his new home. In the years to come, Brown's curiosity would lead him on a series of literal and investigative journeys across Alabama's physical and cultural landscape which he endeavored to bring back to the classroom. Upon retirement in 2016, Brown set to work weaving together an account of the encounters and activities that unfolded in his early years in Alabama as the state slowly made him into one of its own. Incorporating personal experiences and insights drawn from a lifetime of learning and teaching, the resultant memoir begins with his first brush with the Cahaba River and spans topics ranging from salamander migration, shape note singing (with Wayne Flynt, no less), disappearing arts and crafts traditions, land use patterns over time, historic preservation, experiential education, birds, bats, railroad hollers, and more than a few fish tales along the way. Interspersed throughout with insights drawn from Brown's academic career, Distracted by Alabama traces a very personal, historically informed, and idiosyncratic profile of a region in transition in the mid to late twentieth century. It also stands as testament to the ideals and value of liberal arts education in a society"--