The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South

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

This book is a masterful study . . . . engaging, enlightening, and deeply relevant-an impressive and fitting accomplishment for Wilson's already storied career."-The Civil War Monitor

[Charles Reagan Wilson] knows all there is to know about Southern culture, and then some. His 1,600-page half-tonne truck of a book, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989), was a landmark work that, in this 600-page epic, has found its narrative partner . . . . He ranges across the full story, from fine oratory to racial epithets, from great literatures to two-dime records, from classical mansions to juke joints . . . . Wilson has spent his life turning the South from something not forgotten into something born again."-The New Statesman

What makes this book a commanding work of scholarship is the subtlety of Wilson's exploration of the centuries-long evolution of regional identity, its engagement with questions of authority, and its adaptation to changing social and economic conditions. . . . This work, the product of a distinguished career, powerfully shows that southern cultures and identities remain vital scholarly subjects."-North Carolina Historical Review