ONLY THE NAMES REMAIN

Only The Names Remain ($15.95, $3.95 paper; April 1996; 76 pp.; 0-316-08518-9, paper 0-316-08519-7): This history of the Cherokees in Georgia, originally published in 1972 and textually unrevised here, remains elegantly elegiac, bringing both clarity and immediacy to a complicated story. The book concisely covers the period from centuries before the arrival of the first white man in 1540, to the removal of most traces of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia after 1837, through the Trail of Tears, a journey that took one life in four among those who attempted it. This edition is newly embellished by Rodanas's black-and-white drawings, which soberly present Cherokee artifacts in full pages preceding each brief chapter and make this slender work even more accessible and vital to the chapter-book crowd than it was originally. (index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)