A new kind of primary source reader for the U.S. survey, The South in the History of the Nation enlivens American history for students in the South by placing it in familiar contexts. Fifteen chapters in each volume explore episodes and issues of national import with a broad swath of regional examples. More than 100 readings drawn from southern sources — among them letters, speeches, diary entries, government records, newspaper articles, and interviews — balance a variety of political and social topics. Because the organization and pace of the chapters parallel most major survey tests, instructors can easily incorporate the documents into the survey course without making extensive alternations to the syllabus. Generous editorial apparatus — including chapter introductions that identify the relationship between the southern documents and the national history, headnotes, prereading questions, gloss notes, and bibliographies — guides students through the documents and constantly emphasizes their role in the American history survey course.
WILLIAM A. LINK is department head and professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is author of A Hard Country and Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 (1986); The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (1992); Power and Purpose in American Higher Education (1995); and The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths and Other Documents of Social Reform in the Progressive Era South (Bedford Books, 1996)
MARJORIE SPRUILL WHEELER, professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi, is a former president of the Southern Association for Women Historians. She is best known for her work on the woman suffrage movement, including New Women of the South: Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (1993) and One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (1995), the companion volume to the PBS documentary One Woman, One Vote.