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An Island in the Lake of Fire: Bob Jones University, Fundamentalism & the Separatist Movement by Mark Taylor Dalhouse (Review)

by Charles W. Dunn

University of Georgia Press, 1996 Sometimes baffling its antagonists, other times perplexing its advocates, Bob Jones University (BJU) proclaims itself “the world’s most unusual university.” Perhaps it is also the world’s most misunderstood university. In his book, Mark Taylor Dalhouse has appropriately labeled BJU “an island in the lake of fire.” He could just as »

Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain by David B. Freeman (Review)

by John M. Coski

Mercer University Press, 1997 A heroic monument to the Confederacy first envisioned in 1914 and finally dedicated in 1970 presents an ideal opportunity to explore the Lost Cause in twentieth-century America. Inexplicably, freelance historian David B. Freeman fails to seize this opportunity in his history of Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920 by Henry M. McKiven Jr. (Review)

by Timothy J. Minchin

University of North Carolina Press, 1995 For many years, historians have argued that southern employers used the ideology of white supremacy to divide their workforce. Realizing that effective worker protest depended on whites and blacks forging a unified labor movement, employers maintained racial divisions among employees as a means to control the entire working class. »

“What Nature Suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920 by Mart A. Stewart (Review)

by Albert E. Cowdrey

University of Georgia Press, 1996 If environmental history has one pervading characteristic, it is discontinuity. Climatic and geographic determinism are long dead, and generalizations to replace them are hard to come by, especially as the science of ecology grows increasingly relativistic. With a few notable exceptions- Alfred W. Crosby’s work on the consequences of European »

Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century edited by Mary Beth Pudup, Dwight B. Billings, and Altina L. Waller (Review)

by David E. Whisnant

University of North Carolina Press, 1995 Since the early 1960s a great deal of excellent scholarly work has emerged on Appalachia. Much of that work is the product of a conscious effort by younger scholars- a number of them represented in this volume- to correct unfounded misconceptions that had long flourished not only in popular »

Diversity and Accommodation: Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier edited by Michael J. Puglisi (Review)

by John C. Willias

University of Tennessee Press, 1997 Emory, Virginia, played host to a polyglot gathering of locally focused intellectuals in October 1992. Over a span of two days, scholars interested in frontier Virginia met there to consider, debate, and reevaluate settlement of the Old Dominion’s early westward fringes. From this ferment, editor Michael J. Puglisi of Marian »

Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, The Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South by Kenneth S. Greenberg (Review)

by Catherine Clinton

Princeton University Press, 1996 “Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, The Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South”: What’s not to love about a subtitle like this? But even if we love it, what in the world is the author trying to do? Reviews »

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt by Christine Leigh Heyrman (Review)

by Gaines M. Foster

Alfred A. Knopf, 1997 The Bible Belt. Few images of the South have a more tenacious grip on the popular imagination. Many who use the term as shorthand for evangelism’s centrality to southern culture assume it has always been so. The South, after all, never changes. Southern Cross should help dispel the idea of a seamless history »

John Stuart and the Struggle for Empire on the Southern Frontier by J. Russell Snapp (Review)

by Robert M. Weir

Louisiana State University Press, 1996 J. Russell Snapp’s volume joins a rapidly lengthening list of new studies of the southern frontier in the eighteenth century—all intent on enlarging our understanding of Native Americans, Indian-white relations, and/or the American Revolution in the region. Insofar as it shares these aims, Snapp’s volume is not unique, but to »

Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms by Charles Hudson (Review)

by Peter H. Wood

University of Georgia Press, 1997 In 1847 while debate over the controversial War with Mexico raged in Congress, the decoration of Charles Bulfinch’s U.S. Capitol Building was nearing completion. John Trumbull’s four epic scenes of the revolutionary era had graced one side of the massive Rotunda for several decades, and three paintings featuring Columbus, Pocahontas, »