American South - 5th Edition by William J Cooper & Thomas E Terrill & Christopher Childers (Paperback)

About the Book

In The American South: A History, Fifth Edition, William J. Cooper, Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill demonstrate their belief that it is impossible to divorce the history of the South from the history of the United States. The authors' analysis underscores the complex interaction bet...

Book Synopsis

In The American South: A History, Fifth Edition, William J. Cooper, Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill demonstrate their belief that it is impossible to divorce the history of the South from the history of the United States. The authors' analysis underscores the complex interaction between the South as a distinct region and the South as an inescapable part of America. Cooper and Terrill show how the resulting tension has often propelled section and nation toward collision. In supporting their thesis, the authors draw on the tremendous amount of profoundly new scholarship in Southern history. Each volume includes a substantial bibliographical essay--completely updated for this edition--which provides the reader with a guide to literature on the history of the South. This volume contains updated chapters, and tables.

Review Quotes

As the first full textbook on the region's history, Cooper and Terrill's The American South has long been a staple in undergraduate classrooms, and for good reason. This comprehensive, but concise, history by distinguished scholars of the Old and New South, respectively, serves both students and instructors as an effective introduction and a ready reference. In chronicling the South's distinctive history, the authors are constantly attuned to the fact that its history has always integral to that of the nation as a whole; their ability to so adeptly balance the particular with the general makes this an engaging and eminently teachable narrative.

Combining original analysis with an impressive grasp of relevant scholarship, The American South: A History is distinguished by its wealth of fascinating information and its strong narrative style. It is the kind of book that students want to keep when the course is finished.

Given the many recent books on specific periods of Southern history (particularly the Civil War), the appearance of this text that covers the sweep of Southern history from the English origins of Jamestown through the rise and fall of the 'Solid South' to the socioeconomic transformation of the Sunbelt in the 1970s and 1980s is most welcome. Stressing the dynamics of the relationship between white and black Southerners that have shaped the history of the region for more than 300 years, the authors (both professors at Southern universities) incorporate recent scholarship into their attempt to answer two long-standing questions: What was and is the American South? What was and is a Southerner? Along the way they pay attention to such traditional subjects as political leadership and plantation economics, as well as to topics once conspicuously absent from Southern history textbooks: Southern Native Americans, the slave family, post-emancipation black life, Southern labor, and Southern women.

This massive, colorful, continually absorbing panorama takes a fresh look at the whole of Southern history. . . . The authors, both history professors . . . bring recent scholarship to bear on a host of topics, from guerrilla warfare between royalists and rebels during the American Revolution to slavery, the Southern Literary Renaissance and the decline of front-porch culture in the urbanized Sunbelt. On some issues they take a revisionist stance (e.g., 'Whether patriarchy was the official ideology in the antebellum South is by no means clear'). Although Southern culture remained trapped in Victorianism as late as the 1920s, modernism forced a wrenching self-examination. The authors find 'no Eden in Dixie' as they survey the New South of persistent racial division, high murder rates, televangelism and low incomes.

About the Author

William J. Cooper, Jr. is Boyd professor of History at Louisiana State University.
Thomas E. Terrill is emeritus professor of History at the University of South Carolina.
Christopher Childers is assistant professor of History at Pittsburg State University.