The Barling Darling: Hal Smith in American Baseball

(Little Rock: Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2009). Jim Bailey wrote in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that “Smith’s biography, exhaustively researched and comprehensively written, is a neat job – certain to stir nostalgia for Cardinal fans with long memories.” A reviewer of The Barling Darling wrote “With a heightened sociological imagination Higgins is able to locate the life of Hal Smith as an individual within the wider social context of mid 20th century America. The reader is treated to incisive detail as to how the unpredictable turns in the life of a nation impact the life of an individual. With a keen eye Higgins details Hal Smith not just as a solid baseball player but as someone who loved to play the game, and loved to play it with others. Clearly, what has given Hal Smith the measure of success he has had in life- on and off the diamond, is a collegiality that exudes warmth and confidence in those around him.”

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A Stranger and a Sojourner:

Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004) tells the story of a man of African descent who defied generalizations about race as he served with distinction in the United States Army during and after the War of 1812. As a member of an elite rifle company, Peter Caulder helped establish Fort Smith in 1817. Following twelve years in the army, Caulder married Eliza Hall and the couple lived on their small farm for thirty years while raising their seven children as an integral part of a free black community nestled along the White River in Marion County. A Stranger and A Sojourner was the 2005 co-winner of the Ragsdale Award presented by the Arkansas Historical Society for the best book on Arkansas history.

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Fort Smith: Vanguard of Western Frontier History.

Eastern National, 2007. This 72 page booklet narrates events and describes key people that transformed a remote and forested rendezvous point on the Arkansas River called Belle Point into a fort and then a bustling city on America’s mid-continental frontier. Color photographs, paintings, maps, and insets complement the text to bring the stirring past of a fascinating city into bold relief for the reader.

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