A University of Alabama professor will be speaking tonight about his new book on the Jacksonian era.

Joshua Rothman, a UA associate professor of history and the director of Summersell Center for the Study of the South, will be discussing his book “Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson” in the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall Wednesday night.

The book, which was published by the University of Georgia Press, includes a series of stories about a slave insurrection scare in Mississippi, information on a series of riots against professional gamblers and a story about a man who desperately wants to make a name for himself but constantly runs into failure.

Rothman hopes the lecture and Q & A will generate an interest to read more about the elements of the story.

“I’d want them to come away having an understanding that the world and values of slavery and the cotton South were not so distant and different from the world and values of market capitalism in the United States before the Civil War,” Rothman said.

Jessica Lacher-Feldman, the curator of rare books and special collections at the Hoole Library, organized the talk and will be introducing Rothman Wednesday night. She said the event is meant to celebrate the work of the teaching faculty at the University.

“I think it is especially important for students to see their professors in a different light,” Lacher-Feldman said. “Dr. Rothman’s work in antebellum Southern history is widely recognized and appreciated, and I think it is good for students to see his other side and also to be engaged in intellectual and creative endeavors outside the classroom.”

The speech will take place on the second floor of the Hoole Library at 5:30 p.m.