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

Applebome, Peter

3.77

74 ratings by Goodreads

9780812926538: Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812926536 ISBN 13: 9780812926538

Publisher: Times Books, 1996

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

As we move toward the end of the century, Southern values have become American values. Southern politicians lead both political parties, and the South has powered the rightward shift in American politics over the course of the past three decades. The South is far and away the leading area of population and economic growth in America. People in Michigan are listening to country music and parishioners in California are worshiping at Southern Baptist churches. New Yorkers are lining up to hear Newt Gingrich speak and militia members in Idaho look at Southern neo-Confederates as allies and inspirations. And while the nation wrestles with problems of race, ethnicity, and diversity, no place has grappled with those problems longer, with both tragic and triumphant results, than the South.
Applebome takes us on a wild ride through a South that is both undoubtedly new and still shaped by old ways. We visit Montgomery, Alabama, where an aging and ill George Wallace looks back and realizes that he's won; Charlotte, North Carolina, where the go-go spirit of the entrepreneurial New South and a vibrant political progressivism live side by side; Nashville, Tennessee, where country music suddenly finds itself the most popular thing on America's radio dial; Honea Path, South Carolina, where the ghosts of murdered strikers still haunt the town - and labor relations - sixty-two years later; Cobb County, Georgia, where old racial issues play out in a new suburban setting; Wilmington, North Carolina, where school segregation is again an issue, only this time those in favor of it are black.
Applebome also takes us to Selma, Alabama, where veteran civil rights activists gather again to remember the past and wonder about the future; to the Mississippi Delta, where neon-drenched casinos and gourmet catfish farms are neighbors to some of America's most astonishing poverty; and Columbia, South Carolina, where a growing group of Southerners believe that the Confederacy was more than a lost cause - it is one still worth fighting for.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Author:

The book both says something important and is a great read.
I'm, of course, the least credible critic of my own book, but I've received great reviews or columns about the book around the country - NY Times Daily and Sunday, Washington Post, full page in Business Week, Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Boston Globe, Oxford American by great Southernologist John Shelton Reed, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Constitution, Dallas Morning News and various others. The book tries to be a book that says something important about the country, while also being a fun, entertaining read. It's half history and sociology, half hanging out at the all-Bruno Shopping Plaza of Alligator, Miss., or watching people pull out each others teeth with pliers in Honea Path, S.C.

About the Author:

Peter Applebome is a writer and editor for the New York Times who covers cultural issues. He has been a reporter for Texas Monthly and the Dallas Morning News, and served as bureau chief for the Times in both Houston and Atlanta. He lives in Chappaqua, New York.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.