Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture - Hardcover

Applebome, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812926536 ISBN 13: 9780812926538

Publisher: Crown, 1996

Synopsis

In a provocative exploration of the triumphant South--the region that increasingly defines American politics and values--the former Atlanta bureau chief of The New York Times illuminates the people, places, and passions of this influential section of the country--an area that has effectively decided the outcome of every presidential election in the past 30 years.

About this title

From the Back Cover

tive exploration of the triumphant South--the region that increasingly defines American politics and values--the former Atlanta bureau chief of The New York Times illuminates the people, places, and passions of this influential section of the country--an area that has effectively decided the outcome of every presidential election in the past 30 years.

Reviews

By turns seduced and repelled by Southern politics and culture, former longtime New York Times Atlanta bureau chief and transplanted Yankee Applebome grapples engagingly and appreciatively here with the stunning contradictions of the modern South. Not only does the South exercise disproportionate political power (Dixie now claims leadership of Congress as well as the White House); most of our serious conflicts over race and religion continue to play out dramatically in the old Confederacy. Applebome's unusual historical literacy helps him understand a region drenched in the tradition and legends of the Civil War, racist demagoguery and the battles over integration. Outsiders will be astonished by the new popularity of the Confederacy. Southerners black and white will recognize themselves in portraits of Selma, Ala., then and now, Nashville's music, South Carolina firebrands, Southern Baptist conventions and the saga of George Wallace. Above all, it is race that saturates Southern life. Because the author zeroes in on race and lets Southerners tell their own stories, this is a compelling, disturbing, at times inspiring book. As he stresses, no place in the U.S. has been so defined by race?and "the racial scapegoating... that crippled the South for so long will do the same thing for the nation." Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Since the 1970s, a persistent theme in both academic and journalistic writing on the American South has been the presumed "convergence" of the politics and culture of the South with those of the non-South. Writers have also debated the question of whether this convergence is primarily a product of an "Americanization" of the South or of a "Southernization" of the non-South. Although New York Times journalist Applebome shows influence in both directions, his subtitle makes it clear that his focus is the South's influence on the rest of the nation. The author relies heavily on travels and interviews he did in the South over a period of 18 months starting in early 1995. Although he is a perceptive writer on matters pertaining to Southern culture and values, Applebome's understanding of Southern politics is not always as insightful. For public libraries.?Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A New York Times reporter traverses the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas), with a foray to Nashville. A northerner and long-time resident of Atlanta, Applebome brings detachment and engagement to his journalistic mapping of the salient points in the South's contemporary landscape. He is plainly amazed and dismayed by much of the scenery, such as de facto segregation, but Applebome must be a disarming reporter because he easily gets people, black and white, to open up their feelings about politics and society 30 years after the civil rights movement. His method is to examine a specific locale, such as Cobb County, the booming Atlanta suburb, or Selma, Alabama. In a dozen such places, the combination of short history, interviews, and visual observations of squalor, wealth, and bumper stickers conveys the southern attribute Applebome wishes to highlight, be it the country music boom or the pervasive remembrances of the Civil War. A vibrant tableau of current trends in a region where the past is always present. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812926536
• ISBN 13: 9780812926538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 385