Book Reviews by Title

On this page, we've alphabetized our Book Reviews by title. To read these reviews through the Project Muse Digital Library, follow the direct links below. In addition, all of our Book Reviews are searchable by content and are grouped under the READ by Subject categories to the left. You also can search Book Reviews by Author.



read the AMERICAN SOUTH IN A GLOBAL WORLD review onlineA

Kenneth E. Koons and Warren R. Hofstra
After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900 (review)
     reviewed by John C. Inscoe

Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne, Editors
All Out of Faith:  Southern Women on Spirituality (review)
    reviewed by Barbara Brown Taylor

James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews, Editors
The American South in a Global World (review)
    reviewed by David A. Davis

Gregg D. Kimball
American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond (review)
     reviewed by David R. Goldfield

James C. Cobb 
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (review)
     reviewed by Jane Elizabeth Dailey

B

Keith Lee Morris
The Best Seats in the House (review)
    reviewed by Dave Shaw

Steven P. Miller 
Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (review)
    reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield

Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh
Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn: Re-imagining the American Dream (review)
     reviewed by Christopher Windolph

Andrew H. Myers
Black, White & Olive Drab:
Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, SC, and the Civil Rights Movement (review)

       reviewed by Alex Macaulay

Jonathan S. Bass
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (review)
     reviewed by Katherine Mellen Charron

Timothy B. Tyson
Blood Done Sign My Name (review)
     reviewed by Fred C. Hobson

Stephen Cushman
Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle (review)
     reviewed by William L. Barney

Roger D. Abrahams, with Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed, and Robert Farris Thompson
Blues for New Orleans:
Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul (review)

       reviewed by Perry Kasprzak

Walter M. Brasch
Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the 'Cornfield Journalist': The Tale of Joel Chandler Harris (review)
     reviewed by Jennifer Lynn Ritterhouse


C

Mark Catesby
Catesby's Birds of Colonial America (review)
     reviewed by T. Edward Nickens 

John Lane
Chattooga: Descending Into the Myth of Deliverance River (review)
    reviewed by Timothy Silver

Helen Taylor
Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens (review)     
     reviewed by Brian Ward

Renee Christine Romano and Leigh Raiford, editors
The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (review)
     reviewed by Carole Blair

James R. Goff Jr.
Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (review)  
     reviewed by James Parrish

Michael O’Brien 
Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (review)
    reviewed by Paul D. H. Quigley

Rob Storter
Crackers in the Glade: Life and Times in the Old Everglades (review) 
     reviewed by Carolyn Kindell, KC Smith, Andi Milam Reynolds



D

Ralph W. Johnson
David Played a Harp: A Free Man's Battle for Independence (review)
     reviewed by Hunter James

John B. Rehder
Delta Sugar: Louisiana's Vanishing Plantation Landscape (review)
     reviewed by John Michael Vlach

Sarah-Patton Boyle
The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (review)
     reviewed by Melton Alonze McLaurin

Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall
Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (review)
    reviewed by Michael Chitwood

J. Mills Thornton
Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (review)
    reviewed by Ralph Luker

Kari A. Frederickson
The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (review)
     reviwed by Jack Bass

Karen L. Cox
Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (review)
     reviewed by Gaines M. Foster

Bill C. Malone
Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class (review)
     reviewed by Patrick Huber 


E

Janisse Ray and Rob Storter
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (review)
     reviewed by Carolyn Kindell, KC Smith, Andi Milam Reynolds

Barbara Ransby
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (review)
    reviewed by Charles M. Payne 

F

Donald M. Kartiganer
Faulkner at 100: Retrospect and Prospect (review)
     reviewed by Stephen M. Ross

Don Harrison Doyle 
Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha (review)
     reviewed by Linda Wagner-Martin

Clive Webb
Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (review)
     reviewed by Eliza R. L. McGraw

Jim Wright
Fixin' To Git: One Fan's Love Affair with NASCAR's Winston Cup (review)
     reviewed by Dan Pierce 

Paul Harvey
Freedom's Coming:
Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era, (review)

   reviewed by Matt J. Zacharias Harper


G

Patricia Bellis Bixel and Elizabeth Haynes Turner
Galveston and the 1900 Storm: Castastrophe and Catalyst (review)
     reviewed by Jay Barnes 

Hal Crowther
Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-Millennial South (review)
    reviewed by John Shelton Reed

Joseph T. Glatthaar 
General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse (review)
     reviewed by Gerald J. Prokopowicz

Benjamin R. Justesen
George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life (review)
     reviewed by John H. Haley

James C. Cobb and William Stueck, Editors 
Globalization and the American South (review)
    reviewed by David A. Davis

Daniel S. Pierce
The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park (review)
     reviewed by Frank G. Queen

James L. Peacock 
Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World (review)
       reviewed by Leon Fink

Jennifer Ritterhouse
Growing up Jim Crow: 
How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race (review)

       reviewed by Clara Silverstein
Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern 
A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Eastern North Carolina (review)
    reviewed by William S. Price Jr.

Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern 
A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina (review)
    reviewed by William S. Price Jr.

Catherine W. Bishir, Michael T. Southern, and Jennifer F. Martin
A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Western North Carolina (review)
    reviewed by William S. Price Jr.


H

Robert F. Pace
Halls of Honor: College Men in the Old South (review)
    reviewed by Peter S. Carmichael

John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney
The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (review)
     reviewed by Jan Davidson 

Brooke Blevins 
Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image (review)
      
reviewed by John C. Inscoe

Gordon Harvey, Richard Starnes, and Glenn Feldman, editors
History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie: 
Scholarship, Activism, and Wayne Flynt (review)

       reviewed by Charles W. Eagles

John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed, with William McKinney 
Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue:
The Definitive Guide to the People, Recipes, and Lore (review)

       reviewed by Fred Sauceman 

Philip C. Kolin and Susan Swartwout, Editors
Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita (review)
    reviewed by Rachel Richardson


I

Steve Estes 
I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (review)
    reviewed by Larry Isaac

René Pol Nevils and Deborah George Hardy
Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole (review)
     reviewed by Bryan Giemza

Carol K. Bleser and Lesley J. Gordon
Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives (review)
     reviewed by Nina Silber

Erik Larson
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (review)
     reviewed by Jay Barnes 



J

Andrew Burstein 
Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (review)
    reviewed by Kristofer Ray

Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, Editors
Jewish Roots in Southern Soil:  A New History (review)
    reviewed by Leonard Rogoff

Leigh H. Edwards
Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity
     reviewed by Jocelyn R. Neal

Nick Kotz
Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America (review)
     reviewed by Jack Bass


K

Keith Perry 
The Kingfish in Fiction (review)
    reviewed by Bryan Giemza


L

Gary R. Mormino
Land of Sunshine, Land of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida (review)
   reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield

Hunter James
The Last Days of Big Grassy Fork (review) 
     reviewed by Fred C. Hobson 

Peter S. Carmichael 
The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (review)
    reviewed by Stephen Berry 

William G. Thomas
Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South (review)
     reviewed by Frank G. Queen

Margaret Bender, Editor
Linguistic Diversity in the South: Changing Codes, Practices, and Ideologies (review)
    reviewed by Michael Montgomery

Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn, Editors
Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies (review)
    reviewed by David A. Davis

Pete Daniel
Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (review)
     reviewed by Fred C. Hobson

Amy Louise Wood
Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1940 (review)
     reviewed by Seth Kotch 

Christopher Metress, editor
The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (review)
     reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield


M

Sheldon Hackney
Magnolias without Moonlight: The American South from Regional Confederacy to National Integration (review)
     reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield

Robert A. Caro 
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3 (review)
    reviewed by John Quinterno

Marcie Cohen Ferris
Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (review)
   reviewed by Dale Volberg Reed

Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, Editors
The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (review)
    reviewed by W. Fitzhugh Brundage

Andrew Silver 
Minstrelsy and Murder:  The Crisis of Southern Humor (review)
    reviewed by Johanna Shields

Jack Temple Kirby 
Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South (review)
     reviewed by Otis L. Graham

Wesley Phillips
Montgomery in the Good War: Portrait of a Southern City, 1939-1946 (review)
     reviewed by David R. Goldfield

W. Todd Grace
Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870
 (review) 
     reviewed by Jan Davidson 

Harlan Greene
Mr. Skylark: John Bennett and the Charleston Renaissance (review)
     reviewed by Dale Volberg Reed

Suzanne Lebsock
A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial (review)
    reviewed by S. Willoughby Anderson


N

Don Harrison Doyle
Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question (review)
     reviewed by Susan Delfino 
     

Leigh Anne Duck
The Nation’s Region:  Southern Modernism, Segregation, and U.S. Nationalism (review)
     reviewed by Michael Kreyling


O

Harvey Broome
Out Under the Sky of the Great Smokies: A Personal Journal (review)
     reviewed by Daniel S. Pierce


P

Erik Bledsoe
Perspectives on Harry Crews (review)
     reviewed by Frank W. Shelton

Shelly Romalis
Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong (review)
     reviewed by Patrick Huber 

Helen C. Rountree 
Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown (review)
    reviewed by Michael D. Green

David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger, and Paul D. Mueller
The Politics of Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period (review)
     reviewed by John Quinterno

Michelle Brattain
The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (review)
     reviewed by Carl Burkart

David. R. Davies
The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement (review)
     reviewed by Berkly Hudson


R

David W. Blight
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (review)
     reviewed by Bruce. E. Baker

K. Michael Prince 
Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! South Carolina and the Confederate Flag (review)
    reviewed by John M. Coski

Kwame Ture
Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (review)
     reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield 

Lucinda MacKethan, editor
Recollections of a Southern Daughter: A Memoir by Cornelia Jones Pond of Liberty County (review)
     reviewed by Julia Ridley Smith  

Randy J. Sparks
Religion in Mississippi (review)
     reviewed by David Edwin Harrell 

Jeannette Keith
Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight (review)
    reviewed by Jonathan F. Phillips

Anne Sarah Rubin
The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 (review)
    reviewed by Don H. Doyle 

Earl Black and Merle Black
The Rise of Southern Republicans (review)
     reviewed by John Quinterno

Ken Breslauer
Roadside Paradise (review) 
     reviewed by Robert E. Snyder

Roy Blount Jr
Robert E. Lee: A Shattered Nation (review)
    reviewed by J. Tracy Power


S

Laura Edwards
Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era (review)
     reviewed by Julia Ridley Smith 
 

Anya Jabour
Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (review)
    reviewed by Katy Simpson Smith

Wilber W. Caldwell 
Searching for the Dixie Barbecue: Journeys into the Southern Psyche (review)
    reviewed by John Shelton Reed

Henry Clay Anderson
Separate, But Equal:
The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson
 (review)

     reviewed by Todd J. Moye

James Applewhite
Selected Poems (review)
   reviewed by Robert M. West

Heather Andrea Williams
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (review)
    reviewed by Robin Bernstein

Bess Lomax Hawes  (review)
Sing It Pretty: A Memoir  (review)
    reviewed by Joshua Guthman

Allan Paul Speer, editor, with Janet Barton Speer
Sisters of Providence: The Search for God in the Frontier South, 1843-1858 (review)
     reviewed by Julia Ridley Smith  

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (review)
  reviewed by Daniel C. Littlefield

Louis M. Kyriakoudes
The Social Origins of the Urban South (review)
    reviewed by Tom Hanchett

Rob Amberg
Sodom Laurel Album (review)
    reviewed by Cary Fowler

David A. Taylor
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America (review)
     reviewed by Robert Hunt Ferguson 

David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis  
The South, the Nation, and the World: Perspectives on Southern Economic Development  (review)
    reviewed by Gavin Wright

Fred C. Hobson
South to the Future: An American Region in the Twenty-first Century (review)
     reviewed by Michael Kreyling 

George P. Garrett, James McKinley (Editor)
Southern Excusions: Views on Southern Letters in My Time (review)
    reviewed by Samuel F. Pickering

W. Fitzhugh Brundage
The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (review)
   reviewed by John Bodnar

David R. Goldfield
Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (review)
     reviewed by David W. Blight

Trudier Harris
Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South (review)
     
reviewed by Melton Alonza McLaurin

Anne Mitchell Whisnant 
Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (review)
    reviewed by Charles L. Perdue


T

William F. Powers
Tar Heel Catholics (review)
     reviewed by John Quinterno 

Michael McFee, editor
This Is Where We Live: Short Stories by 25 Contemporary North Carolina Writers (review) 
     reviewed by George Hovis 

Christopher Hitchens 
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (review)
    reviewed by Brian Steele

Casey Edward Greene and Shelly Henley Kelly
Through a Night of Horrors: Voices from the 1900 Galveston Storm (review)
     reviewed by Jay Barnes 

Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis with photographs by Billy E. Barnes
To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America
     reviewed by Michael K. Honey 

Pete Daniel
Toxic Drift:  Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South (review)
    reviewed by Otis L. Graham

Jim Carrier
A Traveler's Guide to the Civil Rights Movement (review)
     reviewed by S. Willoughby Anderson

Daniel Patterson
A Tree Accurst: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver (review)
     reviewed by Brooke Calton

Al Burt
The Tropic of Cracker (review)
     reviewed by Carolyn Kindell, KC Smith, Andi Milam Reynolds


W

David Cecelski
The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (review)
     reviewed by William Scott

Donald Edward Davis
Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians(review)
     reviewed by Frank G. Queen

Anthony Dunbar, editor (foreword by Jimmy Carter)
Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent (review)
    reviewed by E. M. Beck

Margaret Lynn Brown
The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains (review)

     reviewed by Frank G. Queen

Hazel Dickens and Bill C. Malone 
Working Girl Blues: The Life & Music of Hazel Dickens (review)
    reviewed by Joshua Guthman


V

Calder Loth
The Virginia Landmarks Register, Fourth Edition (review) 
     reviewed by Henry Taylor