The Southern Way of Life

616 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 39 halftones, notes, index

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6498-9
Published: January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-6499-6
Published: November 2022

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How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life—a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region's identity. Surveying three centuries of southern regional consciousness across many genres, disciplines, and cultural strains, Wilson considers and challenges prior presentations of the region, advancing a vision of southern culture that has always been plural, dynamic, and complicated by race and class.

Structured in three parts, The Southern Way of Life takes readers on a journey from the colonial era to the present, from when complex ideas of "southern civilization" rooted in slaveholding and agrarianism dominated to the twenty-first-century rise of a modern, multicultural "southern living." As Wilson shows, there is no singular or essential South but rather a rich tapestry woven with contestations, contingencies, and change.

About the Author

Charles Reagan Wilson is professor emeritus of history and southern studies at the University of Mississippi.
For more information about Charles Reagan Wilson, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"An impressive and elucidating work of cultural history"—Publishers Weekly

"Wilson, the dean of southern studies, has given us a monumental interdisciplinary and multicultural reassessment of a fabled and oft-troubled region. This study will force a recalibration of old pieties while charting a path toward new forms of social and cultural critique."—John Wharton Lowe, author of Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature