After Dale Short moved away (reluctantly) from his hometown of Shanghi sic] in Walker County, Alabama, he wrote home every week -- by means of a newspaper column in The Daily Mountain Eagle, where he held his first writing job in the late 1960s. The columns -- a homesick country boy's reflections on the comforts, conflicts, and absurdities of living in the modern world -- have become a consistent favorite of Walker County readers, and have been honored multiple times by the Alabama Press Association and Alabama Media Professionals as the outstanding newspaper column in the state. They are collected here in Short's book I Left My Heart in Shanghi, Alabama, along with a new introduction by the author.