Review Essay:--The Transformation of the Late-Twentieth-Century South

Over the past few decades, the study of southern history has experienced an impressive scholarly renewal. Few areas of modern American scholarship have produced such exciting new work. Traditional subjects such as the antebellum South, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction southern politics and race relations have been reworked and reinterpreted. Recent social and cultural history approaches have given us new perspectives on slavery and slaves, the white and black working class, black and white women, urban and rural life, family and religion, and the cultural imperatives that shaped and molded the southern experience. Above all, however, southern historical scholarship has moved solidly into the twentieth century. This outpouring of work on the modern South— on southern politics, on race relations, on civil rights, on rural and urban change, and on many other subjects— has made possible Numan V. Bartley’s compelling synthesis, The New South, 1945-1980, the eleventh volume in Louisiana State University Press’s distinguished History of the South series