Minding the South / John Shelton Reed.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reed, John Shelton.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Southern States--Civilization--20th century.

Southern States.

Southern States--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (307 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

You're in the American South now, a proud region with a distinctive history and culture. A place that echoes with names like Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, Scarlett O'Hara and Uncle Remus, Martin Luther King and William Faulkner, Billy Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley. Home of the country blues and country music, bluegrass and Dixieland jazz, gospel music and rock and roll. Where menus offer both down-home biscuits and gravy and uptown shrimp and grits. Where churches preach against "cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women" (all Southern products) and where American football is a religion. For more than thirty years John Shelton Reed has been "minding" the South--watching over it, providing commentary upon it. He is the author or editor of thirteen books about the South, and despite his disclaimer regarding formal study of Southern history, Reed has read widely and in depth about the South. His primary focus is upon Southerners' present-day culture and consciousness, but he knows that one must approach the South historically in order to understand the place and its people. Why is the South so different from the rest of the country? Rupert Vance, Reed's predecessor in sociology at Chapel Hill, once observed that the very existence of the South is a triumph of history over geography and economics. The South has resisted being assimilated by the larger United States and has kept a personality that is distinctly its own. That is why Reed celebrates the South. His essays cover everything from great thinkers about the South--Eugene D. Genovese, C. Vann Woodward, M. E. Bradford--to the uniqueness of a region that was once a hotbed of racism, but has recently attracted hundreds of thousands of blacks transplanted from the North. There are even a few chapters about Southerners who have devoted their talents to different subjects altogether, from politics or soft drinks to rock and roll or the design of silver jewelry. Reed writes with wit and Southern charm, never afraid to speak his mind, even when it comes to taking his beloved South to task. While readers may not share all his opinions, most will agree that John Shelton Reed is one of the best "South watchers" there is.

Contents:

The three Souths

The journalistic eye

The mind of the South and Southern distinctiveness

The times looks at Dixie

Among the believers the secret history of civil rights

The smoke never clears

One tough lady

A South that never was

History and historians

American weed

Slaves View slavery

Slipshod totalitarianism Southern intellect

Southern studies abroad

Friends and masters

C. Vann Woodward

Eugene D. Genovese

M.E. Bradford

What they say about Dixie

Of Collard greens and kings

Red and yellow, black, and white

Telling about the South

The imagined South

Six Southerners

Lady propagandist of the Old South

The man from New Orleans

The world's best-selling novelist

Mover and shaker

Hardy perennial

The southern Elvis

The end of Elvis

Southern culture, High and low

Southern laughter

A cokelorist at work

The national magazine of the South

Carolina couch crime

Southern lit (and one movie)

Taking a stand

Portrait of Atlanta

Nebbish from Mississippi

Hollywood chain gangs

Reflections

The banner that Won't stay furled

The most Southern state?

Brits and grits

Missing

He's baaack

If at first you don't secede ...

Party down

Our kind of Yankee

But let's talk about me

Mixing in the mountains

Among the Baptists

Choosing the South.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-289).

ISBN:

0-8262-6453-0

OCLC:

59671790