Virginia Books and Authors

In 1973, Petersburg added to the Virginia history it had long been making by becoming the first city in the state to elect a majority-black City Council in modern times.

That distinction, as well as many others, is among the history that Amina Luqman-Dawson recounts in African Americans of Petersburg (128 pages, Arcadia Publishing, $21.99).

With scores of archival photographs and informative captions, "African Americans of Petersburg" focuses, of course, on the civil-rights struggle. But there's plenty more, as Luqman-Dawson includes details of black residents' religious and business lives, too.

The book is part of the publisher's "Images of America" series, which celebrates the history of neighborhoods, towns and cities across the United States.

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When the Rev. John Killinger moved to Lynchburg in 1980 to become pastor of First Presbyterian Church, the city was already known as the home of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a conservative Baptist broadcaster and founder of Moral Majority and Thomas Road Baptist Church.

In The Other Preacher in Lynchburg: My Life Across Town From Jerry Falwell (208 pages, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.99), Killinger writes of how he and Falwell became opponents but how Killinger came to realize that Falwell -- though he still believed him wrong -- was a seminal figure in American Christianity.

After six years, Killinger left Lynchburg for a pastorate in Los Angeles. He and his wife now live in Warrenton in Fauquier County, and he writes of his years in Lynchburg with candor.

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If you travel the back roads throughout Virginia or other mid-Atlantic states, you can still occasionally see one -- and wonder at the sturdiness that allows it to remain standing.

In Kitchens, Smokehouses and Privies: Outbuildings and the Architecture of Daily Life in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic (304 pages, Cornell University Press, $27.95), Michael Olmert takes the reader into rural backyards; towns such as Annapolis, Md., and Williamsburg; and presidential estates such as Monticello and Mount Vernon for a detailed look at the structures.

Olmert, who teaches English literature at the University of Maryland, includes a number of photos of these outbuildings, which, in addition to their longevity, retain their fascination. -- Jay Strafford