With the premiere of George Lucas’s new movie Red Tails, there’s a renewed interest in the Tuskegee Airmen who trained in Alabama.

In recognition of this important movie, NewSouth has released new print and ebook titles by military historian Daniel Haulman exploring common misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen, coinciding with our book The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939-1949 by Haulman, Joseph Caver, and Jerome Ennels.

As Haulman writes in his introduction to What Hollywood Got Right and Wrong about the Tuskegee Airmen in the Great New Movie, Red Tails, “For anyone who wants to know what in the Red Tails movie is not historically accurate, I have noted some cases. This list of differences between the Red Tails depiction of the Tuskegee Airmen and the real Tuskegee Airmen story is not intended to denigrate the movie — Red Tails is dramatic and thrilling and is a great contribution to the depiction of black servicemen in World War II — but merely to caution those who might mistakenly take the fictional account as history.”

The Airmen commander, for instance, never demanded that the Airmen be able to trade their old planes for new ones as depicted in the movie; the Airmen also did not protect the bombers alone in Berlin. These differences and more Haulman points out with praise for the Red Tails movie but with an eye toward historical accuracy for interested readers.

Haulman’s Red Tails title joins two others: Eleven Myths about the Tuskegee Airmen (available in print and ebook) and The Tuskegee Airmen and the “Never Lost a Bomber” Myth (ebook exclusive). These books look at additional “myths” that have cropped up around the legend of the Tuskegee Airmen, including the myth that the Tuskegee Airmen were the first to shoot down German jets, and that the Airmen once robbed an Allied train to get fuel tanks for their planes.

These three books serve as handy companions both to the Red Tails movie, and to the Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History book written by Haulman, Caver, and Ennels. The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History is a lush, detailed volume that spotlights not just the pilots themselves, but also the doctors, nurses, mechanics, navigators, weathermen, and parachute riggers who contributed to the Airmen’s success. The book includes hundreds of photographs of the Airmen, many never before published, to truly bring the triumphs and struggles of the Tuskegee Airmen to life.

CNN included a number of these photographs in their story “A midair courtship: Tuskegee’s historic love story,” which profiles Herbert Carter and Mildred Hemmons. Carter was a Tuskegee Airmen and Hemmons one of the first black women in Alabama to receive a pilot’s license, who later worked as a civilian at the Tuskegee airfield. CNN details their romance and also how they broke racial barriers, including when Hemmons was photographed with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt after flying her plane.

Lt. Col. Carter appeared with Tuskegee Airmen authors Caver, Ennels, and Haulman decades later at the release of the book in 2011.

Authors Joseph Caver (left), Daniel Haulman (top middle) and Jerome Ennels (right) with former Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. (ret.) Herbert Carter (bottom middle).

We hope that all of these books continue to preserve the well-deserved interest in the Tuskegee Airmen generated by the Red Tails movie.

* The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939-1949 is available in print direct from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your favorite book retailer.

* Eleven Myths about the Tuskegee Airmen is available in print and ebook formats from NewSouth Books or your favorite book retailer or ebook store.

* The Tuskegee Airmen and the “Never Lost a Bomber” Myth is available in all major ebook formats from NewSouth Books or your favorite ebook store.

* What Hollywood Got Right and Wrong about the Tuskegee Airmen in the Great New Movie, Red Tails is available in all major ebook formats from NewSouth Books or your favorite ebook store.

In advance of April 2012’s one-hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, NewSouth Books is pleased to make a rare firsthand account of the disaster newly available for readers.

Sylvia Harbaugh Caldwell traveled on the Titanic in 1912 with her husband Albert and their ten-month-old son Alden; the family survived due to fortunate seats on the Titanic’s Lifeboat 13. In the aftermath, Caldwell published Women of the Titanic Disaster, a narrative of the sorrow and sacrifices of her fellow female passengers.

Almost no copies of Women of the Titanic Disaster exist; but professor Julie Hedgepeth Williams, Caldwell’s great-niece, inherited a copy, which she used as a basis for her new book A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells’ Story of Survival. In conjunction with NewSouth’s publication of Rare Titanic Family in January 2012, Women of the Titanic Disaster is now available for wide readership as an ebook.

Williams calls Women of the Titanic Disaster a “godsend in letting me hear Sylvia’s voice.” Indeed this touching recollection of the harrowing Titanic disaster will be treasured by readers and researchers alike. Women of the Titanic Disaster is available in the Apple iBookstore, and for the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and all major ebook devices.

A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells’ Story of Survival, by Julie Hedgepeth Williams, will be available in January 2012. Williams is also the author of Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910.

Author and humorist Lewis Grizzard famously refused to write using a computer, so the fact that a number of his best-loved titles are now available as ebooks carries no lack of irony. NewSouth has re-issued Grizzard’s They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat and Elvis is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself — both long out of print — in both paperback and ebook formats, with two more titles on the way. If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Going to Nail My Feet to the Ground and I Haven’t Understood Anything Since 1962 will both be available in print and ebook in early 2012.

News of the Grizzard ebooks has the South buzzing — and indeed orders are pouring in from all across the country. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Arts & Culture blog called the new publications “a veritable renaissance in the Southern humorist’s work.”

“Fans,” the paper continued, “should be feeling pretty good themselves right about now.”

(This, in kind contrast to columnist Dave Lieber’s recent piece, “Why papers are dying: Lewis Grizzard died first,” in which Lieber praises Grizzard’s writing and humor, but ends with the statement that Grizzard is “not talked about anymore.” We respectfully suggest the reports of the death of Grizzard’s popularity may be greatly exaggerated.)

The Journal-Constitution‘s Buzz column with Jennifer Britt and the Wilmington, North Carolina Star-News Bookmarks column also chimed in about the ebooks.

Grizzard’s widow Dedra has been the driving force behind the reissued books, spearheading the resurgence almost twenty years after Grizzard passed away. In interviews on Newsmakers with Tim Bryant on 1340 WGAU in Athens, Georgia, and The Rick Humphries Show in 640 WGST, Dedra talked about how she and NewSouth fit when she found a publisher that would reissue Grizzard’s books right away, instead of simply holding the rights.

Dedra told Rick Humphries that she believed part of Grizzard’s appeal was that he could write about “things we think about but don’t necessarily know how to verbalize.” She and Tim Bryant spoke about how the ebooks might help Grizzard gain a new generation of fans.

“Lewis’s work is universal, it’s timeless,” she said. “He’s very funny and writes about the truth of the human condition. I hope we have a lot of younger fans that are listening and will download a book and have a taste of Lewis.”

Read the Arts & Culture blog and The Buzz at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website, and Bookmarks is archived on the Star-News website. You can listen to Dedra Grizzard on Newsmakers with Tim Bryant and The Rick Humpries Show online.

Lewis Grizzard’s They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat and Elvis is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself are both available in print and in all major ebook formats from NewSouth Books or your favorite book retailer.