The American South: A History, Volume 2, From Reconstruction to the Present, Fifth Edition [Hardcover]

In The American South: A History, Fifth Edition, William J. Cooper, Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill demonstrate their belief that it is impossible to divorce the history of the South from the history of the United States. The authors' analysis underscores the complex interaction between the South as a distinct region and the South as an inescapable part of America. Cooper and Terrill show how the resulting tension has often propelled section and nation toward collision. In supporting their thesis, the authors draw on the tremendous amount of profoundly new scholarship in Southern history. Each volume includes a substantial bibliographical essaycompletely updated for this editionwhich provides the reader with a guide to literature on the history of the South. This volume contains updated chapters, and tables.

William J. Cooper, Jr. is Boyd professor of History at Louisiana State University.
Thomas E. Terrill is emeritus professor of History at the University of South Carolina.
Christopher Childers is assistant professor of History at Pittsburg State University.

This massive, colorful, continually absorbing panorama takes a fresh look at the whole of Southern history. . . . The authors, both history professors . . . bring recent scholarship to bear on a host of topics, from guerrilla warfare between royalists and rebels during the American Revolution to slavery, the Southern Literary Renaissance and the decline of front-porch culture in the urbanized Sunbelt. On some issues they take a revisionist stance (e.g., 'Whether patriarchy was the official ideology in the antebellum South is by no means clear'). Although Southern culture remained trapped in Victorianism as late as the 1920s, modernism forced a wrenching self-examination. The authors find 'no Eden in Dixie' as they survey the New South of persistent racial division, high murder rates, televangelism and low incomes. Publishers Weekly

As the first full textbook on the region's history,la