The South of the Mind

Book excerpt: "This interdisciplinary work is driven by the question, 'What can imaginings of the South reveal about the recent American past?' In it, Zachary J. Lechner bridges the fields of southern studies, southern history, and post-World War II American cultural and popular culture history in an effort to discern how conceptions of a tradition-bound, 'timeless' South shaped Americans' views of themselves and their society and served as a fantasied refuge from the era's political and cultural fragmentations, namely, the perceived problems associated with urbanization and 'rootlessness.' The book demonstrates that we cannot hope to understand recent U.S. history without exploring how people have conceived the South"--