Jim Brown moved to Alabama in the 1970s to teach history at Samford University, and became fascinated by Alabama, both by its wild biodiversity and its people and their folk traditions, from shape-note singing to basket-weaving and herbalism. Distracted by Alabama is twelve essays with ample illustrations about different aspects of Alabama: it is an unusual book with a wondrous mix of topics. waist deep in both ecology and folklore, and often in the same essays. Although there are some essay-chapters that are strictly about folk traditions and crafts, like the one on the songs of railroad construction men used to coordinate their strikes together when building the lines, there’s more mixture than strict separation, hence the ‘entangled threads’: another entanglement is that the men and women that Brown explores these areas with are themselves not fixated microspecialists, but people whose passions frequently take them between disciplines. A historian Brown is friends with and explores the history of the Cahaba river with, for instance, as they fish its banks, may introduce him to another subject and experts thereof, who will (as Brown forges a friendship with them) introduce him to still other tributaries and streams of interest and tradition. Here covered are rivers, salamanders, fish, birds,  herbalism, railroad songs, and folk crafts like basketweaving and shape-note singing, just for starters. It’s quite the collection with enormous interest to any Alabamian, and has added both to my hunt-down-and-read and hunt-down-and-visit-on-the-weekend lists.