South Books - Page 4

Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War

David Williams

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the author of the celebrated A People's History of the Civil War, a new account of the Confederacy's collapse from within.

The American Confederacy, historian David Williams reveals, was in fact fighting two civil wars—an external one that we hear so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness.

From the Confederacy's very beginnings, Williams shows, white southerners were as likely to have opposed secession as supported it, and they undermined the Confederate war effort at nearly every turn. The draft law was nearly impossible to enforce, women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots, and most of the time two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. In just one of many telling examples in this rich and eye-opening narrative history, Williams shows that, if the nearly half-million southerners who served in the Union military had been with the Confederates, the opposing forces would have been evenly matched.

Shattering the myth of wartime southern unity, this riveting new analysis takes on the enduring power of the Confederacy's image and reveals it to be, like the Confederacy itself, a hollow shell.

Twelve Years a Slave (Library of Southern Civilization)

Solomon Northup, Sue Eakin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

You Will not Be Able To Put This Down 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

While browsing thru the Boston Public Library in 1970 I accidentally came across this book. I have read it at least ten times over the years, have kept in touch with the editor, Sue Eakin, an expert on the South and cultural matters of this kind. This book is an inspiration to everyone. You will be amazed at the tenacity and sheer courage of Northup as he makes his way thru 12 long years on the plantation, and remember that he did not KNOW it would be 12 years. Every Jan 3 or 4th I wake up and think to myself, this is the day Solomon was set free! This book is clearly a treasure that is relatively unknown. You will not read this book only once-----

Editorial Review:

Kidnapped into slavery in 1841, Northup spent 12 years in captivity. This autobiographical memoir represents an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation." — Saturday Review. 7 illustrations. Index.

Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence & Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley

John Gaventa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

"A over B": a study of power relations 3 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

John Gaventa has produced a very thorough analysis of the power relations within the Appalachian mining community, and the struggle of the miners against both oppressive coal companies and a corrupt union, the United Mine workers of America (UMWA). His research covers close to 100 years of coal mining in the Clear Fork Valley.

But his study isn't just a historic account. As he describes the relationship between the miners and the powers that dominate the social and political agenda in the Valley, Gaventa wants to explain why the miners didn't rise to challenge the obvious inequalities created by both corporations and union.

He claims that the ruling elites used indirect means of control to preserve the statu quo, means that fall into a "third dimension of power", according to Gaventa.
In the first dimension possible grievances are expressed but defeated on the political stage. In the second dimension the elite actually hinders the appearance of such challenges altogether, for example through threats or physical force, creating what Gaventa calls "non-issues".
In the third dimension, Gaventa claims, the elite shape the perception of issues, manipulating their subordinates' understanding of their own situation. So, as the miners' conditions became more and more desperate, or at least didn't improve despite many promises, they still supported the elite without having to be forced physically or psychologically to do so.

What Gaventa fails to include in his study is a thorough analysis of the miners' culture, their way of life and their believes, expressed in such social institutions like the church, or music. He so desperately tries to avoid the perception that the miners are in any way to blame for their situation that he sidelines them almost completely as victims of external (and later internal) oppression.
It has to be noticed, though, that Gaventa responds to the approach taken by social scientists in his time, who focused almost exclusively on culture, making the dominated force "B" practically solely responsible for the existing inequalities.

Nevertheless it is a good book on the nature of power. I advise you to watch John Sayles' 1980 movie "Matewan" to learn a little more about the struggle of the miners against the coal companies.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093509/ )
Review by: Sebastian Schoebel
sschoebe@iwu.edu

Who is John Gaventa?
(http://john-gaventa.biography.ms/ )

John Gaventa (1949 - ) is political sociologist and a fellow with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.
He received a MacArthur Award in 1981 for his work with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
Gaventa received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1971, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from until 1996. He started working at the Highlander Research and Education Center in 1976, and was director from 1993 until 1996.
His publications include
„X Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. ISBN 0252009851
„X We make the road by walking : conversations on education and social change. ISBN 0877227756
„X Communities in Economic Crisis: Appalachia & the South ISBN 0877226504
„X Global citizen action ISBN 1555879683


Other reviews
(http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-00985-1.html )

With Power and Powerlessness, a compelling work of powerful reportage and careful analysis, Gaventa joins other trusted Appalachian observers --- Tom Gish, Harry Caudill, James Branscome --- in explaining to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers."
-- The Washington Post

"Gaventa reminds us that the exercise of power has as much to do with preventing decisions as with bringing them about. Force, the threat of sanctions, the invocation of precedents, norms and rules to squash incipient revolt, the introduction of new rules or barriers --- these prevent demands from becoming issues."
-- Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the W. D. Weatherford Award of the Appalachian Society, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSA, Lillian Smith Award of the Southern Regional Council, V.O. Key Award of the Southern PSA,and the Governor's Award from the Kentucky Historical Society

Editorial Review:

Explains to outsiders the conflicts between the financial interests of the coal and land companies, and the moral rights of the vulnerable mountaineers.

Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity

James C. Cobb

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America.
As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the Cavalier myth into the cult of the "Lost Cause," which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of "Southern Renaissance" as well as their African American counterparts in the "Harlem Renaissance"--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the "Southern way of life"--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial, identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a new identity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South?
Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.

Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945 (None)

Ronald D Eller

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Editorial Review:

Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to “uplift” the mountain people through education and industrialization.

 

Ronald D Eller has worked with local leaders, state policymakers, and national planners to translate the lessons of private industrial-development history into public policy affecting the region. In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Eller examines the politics of development in Appalachia since World War II with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America. Appalachia’s struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is also an American story. In the end, Eller concludes, “Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming.”

(20080215)

The Mind of the South

W.J. Cash

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Bedrock For Southern Intellectual History 5 out of 5 stars.
49 of 56 people found this review helpful.

For Boomer aged Southerners, there was no formal Southern history. At school you got Yankee cant; at home you got Lost Cause and Jim Crow. That doesn't fit the Chamber of Commerce image of cities too busy to hate, but that was the reality for all but the most miniscule minority of white Southerners. Through public school and college in The South, I never had a word from Southern thinkers with the minor exception of Faulkner - not much of a thinker, but a good describer.
Cash was my introduction to Southern intellectual history, and by the time I found him I was far from the South in both space and time. I can feel Cash in my very bones; a dose of Tom Watson populism, a dose of Mencken's cynicism, and a whole bunch of the self-loathing that a defeated and impoverished people wore like tattered old clothes every day. Some neo-Southerners call Cash a South-hater, but they miss the point; Cash wanted desperately to love The South, but could find little to love except myth. You get much the same with Woodward, though in finer clothes. "Strange Career" is nothing but myth, yet it propelled Woodward to the heights of the Academy. The key to both these books is that they are Yankee approved mythology. The publishing houses are not on Peachtree Street, they are on 5th Avenue. For anyone wishing to begin exploration of Southern thought, Cash, the Nashville Agrarians, and Strange Career are the places to start. If you go no further, you won't know anything about The South, but to go further, you must start here.

Editorial Review:

Ever since its publication in 1941, The Mind of the South has been recognized as a path-breaking work of scholarship and as a literary achievement of enormous eloquence and insight in its own right. From its investigation of the Southern class system to its pioneering assessments of the region's legacies of racism, religiosity, and romanticism, W. J. Cash's book defined the way in which millions of readers -- on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line -- would see the South for decades to come. This new, fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Mind of the South includes an incisive analysis of Cash himself and of his crucial place in the history of modern Southern letters.

The Story of the Plott Hound: Strike & Stay

Bob Plott

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fascinating Story by a Great Storyteller 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Strike & Stay is without doubt the best history of the wonderful Plott hound that exists. As a North Carolina native, the Plott Hound's having been chosen as the "State Dog" piqued my interest years ago. Now, enlightened by picture-rich Strike & Stay, my interest has only increased. This excellent narrative traces the dog's history from the Black Forest of Germany in 1750 to modern-day recognition as one of the finest dog breeds in the U.S.A, and the world. It is a story engagingly told by the great, great, great grandson of Johannes Plott, whose family first developed the bear-hunting breed for German barons. Sixteen year-old Johannes Plott's 1750 migration to America, his devotion to breeding the finest, most loyal hunting dog in the world, and his descendents' unwavering continuation of that devotion, is a great story for dog lovers, history buffs, hunters and non-hunters. Bob Plott is to be commended for this outstanding work!

Editorial Review:

Recognized now as one of the premier hunting dogs in America, the Plott bear hound is unique among hunting dog breeds because it descends from Germanic stock rather than the traditional English foxhound. The breed's story began when its original breeder, Johannes Plott, and his brother Enoch left Germany in 1750 with their prized hunting dogs. This trip across the Atlantic began the two-hundred-year journey that would culminate in the North Carolina mountains with the development of what is now arguably the world's finest breed of hunting dog.

This fascinating story of the Plott family and the Plott hound is a classic American tale of adventurers and underdogs- a story that Bob Plott, the great-great-greatgrandson of Johannes Plott, is uniquely qualified to tell.

Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906

Edward L. Ayers

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Editorial Review:

Edward L. Ayers monumental history, Promise of the New South, was praised by the eminent historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown as "A work of frequently stunning beauty," who added "The elegance and sensitivity that he achieves are typical of few historical works." Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize for Best Book on American Race Relations from the Organization of American Historians, and the Frank Lawrence Owsley and Harriett Chappell Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association, and finalist for the 1992 National Book Award, the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History, and the 1993 Southern Book Award, Promise of the New South established Ayers as one of the foremost scholars of the American South. Now, in this newly revised edition, Ayers has distilled this remarkable work to offer an even more readable account of the New South.
Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic "Redeemers" swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Here is the local Baptist congregation, the country store, the tobacco-stained second-class railroad car, the rise of Populism: the teeming, nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. And central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. Ayers weaves all these details into the contradictory story of the New South, showing how the region developed the patterns it was to follow for the next fifty years.
A vivid portrait of a society undergoing the sudden confrontation of the promises, costs, and consequences of modern life, this is an unforgettable account of the New South--a land with one foot in the future and the other in the past.

Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction

Melissa Fay Greene

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An evocative oral history and a provocative work of journalism 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

There are a number of astonishing things about this provocative and evocative history of a remote coastal region of Georgia. Greene's chronicle is not simply an account of the institutional and covert racism that plagued one Southern county. Nor is it merely a biography of an unlikely black leader who led a momentous, peaceful rebellion against the white hierarchy before succumbing (at best) to his own credulity or (at worst) to the very corruption he criticized. Instead, "Praying for Sheetrock" is a composite oral history of a complex, deceptively quiet community during the 1970s and 1980s, where the social norms seemed old-fashioned, even quaint, and where even justifiably disgruntled citizens, both white and black, are restrained equally by an ill-defined sense of fear and by a desire to get along with their neighbors.

At the time of the writing, McIntosh County had been dominated by a corrupt yet efficient, nepotistic yet clever "Old Boy" network, but it was also populated by an impoverished black community that, on the surface, seemed to have been on good terms with the local white authorities all through the chaos of the civil rights struggle. For many years, state and federal authorities suspected that county officials, led by Sheriff Tom Poppell, had been deeply implicated in jury tampering, tax evasion, bribery, illegal gambling, drug-running, prostitution, and even murder. Folks joked that Poppell "was the only sheriff in America who owned four houses, one with an airfield, and all on twelve thousand dollars a year." Yet every attempt by higher authorities (who regularly indicated on their reports that Poppell was to be considered "armed and dangerous") failed to nab the suspects. The victims of their never-indicted yet well-documented activities included tourists on the way through the county to family vacations in Florida as well as the local poor.

The story of how this county eventually entered the late 20th century makes fascinating reading, and Greene's prose is an odd yet refreshing blend of journalism and lyricism. (It was included among the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism by the New York University School of Journalism.) The reader is repeatedly stunned by her ability to persuade such a wide spectrum of local citizens--rich and poor, white and black, conservative and liberal--to talk at such length and with such honesty. Only at the very end of the book, in the acknowledgments, does it become clear that the author was far from a Janie-come-lately to the scene: she worked at Georgia Legal Services (which provided advice on civil liberties matters for the black community), was a witness to most of the events, and married one of the lawyers featured in the book. Rather than prejudicing her account, her experiences give the events an insider's perspective and make her relative objectivity all the more admirable. In fact, it's safe to say that only Greene could have written this book. And, much like "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (itself set only a few miles to the north), her book manages to look underneath the scandal and the poverty and to reveal much to admire in the gentle camaraderie of these easygoing neighbors.

Above all, "Praying for Sheetrock" reminds us of the courageous heroes who look "upon law, upon the Constitution, as a series of fundamental truths about basic human rights." Those heroes include black community members, young and old, willing to risk everything for those rights; the lawyers who represented and advised them for next to nothing; and the small yet powerful number of local whites who believed that enough was enough. It's an inspiring tale that reminds us that the civil rights struggle is far from over.

Editorial Review:

Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable book, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, a small, isolated, and lovely place on the flowery coast of Georgia--and a county where, in the 1970s, the white sheriff still wielded all the power, controlling everything and everybody. Somehow the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement managed to bypass McIntosh entirely. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man, Thurnell Alston, to challenge the sheriff and his courthouse gang--and to change the way of life in this community forever. "An inspiring and absorbing account of the struggle for human dignity and racial equality" (Coretta Scott King)

The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

Matthew D. Lassiter

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Editorial Review:

Suburban sprawl transformed the political culture of the American South as much as the civil rights movement did during the second half of the twentieth century. The Silent Majority provides the first regionwide account of the suburbanization of the South from the perspective of corporate leaders, political activists, and especially of the ordinary families who lived in booming Sunbelt metropolises such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond.

Matthew Lassiter examines crucial battles over racial integration, court-ordered busing, and housing segregation to explain how the South moved from the era of Jim Crow fully into the mainstream of national currents. During the 1960s and 1970s, the grassroots mobilization of the suburban homeowners and school parents who embraced Richard Nixon's label of the Silent Majority reshaped southern and national politics and helped to set in motion the center-right shift that has dominated the United States ever since.

The Silent Majority traces the emergence of a "color-blind" ideology in the white middle-class suburbs that defended residential segregation and neighborhood schools as the natural outcomes of market forces and individual meritocracy rather than the unconstitutional products of discriminatory public policies. Connecting local and national stories, and reintegrating southern and American history, The Silent Majority is critical reading for those interested in urban and suburban studies, political and social history, the civil rights movement, public policy, and the intersection of race and class in modern America.