The New Mind of the South

In this âÈêknowing and sensitive bookâÈë (Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs ), Pulitzer PrizeâÈ'finalist Tracy Thompson upends stereotypes and fallacies to reveal the true heart of the American South today. Some say the South has disappeared. Many more are confused about it as a region and a mindset. But in her groundbreaking, thought-provoking exploration of the South, investigative journalist Tracy Thompson, a Georgia native, asserts that it has merely drawn on its oldest tradition: the ability to adapt and transform itself. Thompson spent years traveling throughout the South and discovered a place both amazingly similar and radically different from the land she knew as a child. African Americans who left en masse for much of the twentieth century are returning in huge numbers, drawn back by a mix of ambition, family ties, and cultural memory. Though Southerners remain more churchgoing than other Americans, the evangelical Protestantism that defined Southern culture up through the 1960s has been torn by bitter ideological schisms. The new South is ahead of others in absorbing waves of Latino immigrants, in rediscovering its agrarian traditions, in seeking racial reconciliation, and in reinventing what it means to have roots in an increasingly rootless global culture. Drawing on mountains of data, interviews, and a whole new set of historic archives, Thompson reveals the true character of a region still misunderstood by outsiders and even by its own people. The Boston Globe declared The New Mind of the South âÈêa lucid and inspired endeavor that gracefully handles the Southern paradoxes and polishes away rusted typecasts.âÈë

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