University of North Carolina Press
The South for New Southerners
Key Metrics
- Paul D Escott
- University of North Carolina Press
- Paperback
- 9780807842935
- 8.94 X 5.79 X 0.55 inches
- 0.61 pounds
- History > United States - State & Local - South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,VA,WV)
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Each of the essays adopts a different perspective to suggest just how the South is different from other American regions. In turn, they examine the special meaning of history for Southerners, the boundaries of the South as a geographical and as an imaginary region, the rhetoric and the reality of Southern race relations, the South's change from a rural to a metropolitan culture, the myth of the Southern belle and the reality of Southern women's lives, the political metamorphosis that turned the Solid South into the Solid Republican South, and the recent transformation of the poorest region in the country into an economic wonder called the Sunbelt.
Readers will learn that when Southerners ask strangers what church they attend, the intent is not to pry but to be friendly. They will also discover that where the kudzu grows is one of the best ways to define where the South is located.
The essays offer the insights of both shcolarship and experience, for the contributors -- most of them originally non-Southerners -- learned about this region by living in it as well as studying it.
The contributors are Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Paul D. Escott, David R. Goldfield, Nell Irvin Painter, John Shelton Reed, and Thomas E. Terrill.
Author Bio
Paul D. Escott earned his B.A. degree cum laude from Harvard College and his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University. He taught at UNC Charlotte before coming to Wake Forest, where he served for nine years as Dean of the College.
He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, has received fellowships from the Whitney Young, Jr., Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and twice won an award for the best non-fiction book published by a resident of North Carolina.
His most recent book is Lincoln’s Dilemma: Blair, Sumner, and the Republican Struggle over Racism and Equality in the Civil War Era.
He comments: “The history of the Civil War Era looms large in our nation’s struggles to overcome racism and realize its ideals of freedom and equality. Even today popular culture misrepresents the reality of the Civil War era in ways that obscure our understanding of our society’s past. Excessive glorification of the Confederacy or the Union can blind us to the nature of the problems that the United States has had to surmount or struggles with still.”
- Education
- B.A. Harvard College 1969
M.A. Duke University 1972
Ph.D. Duke University 1974
Source: Wake Forest University
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