The Southern Way of Life

Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South

De: Charles Reagan Wilson

Narrado por: Chris Abernathy

How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life—a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region's identity. Surveying three centuries of southern regional consciousness across many genres, disciplines, and cultural strains, Wilson considers and challenges prior presentations of the region, advancing a vision of southern culture that has always been plural, dynamic, and complicated by race and class.

Structured in three parts, The Southern Way of Life takes listeners on a journey from the colonial era to the present, from when complex ideas of "southern civilization" rooted in slaveholding and agrarianism dominated to the twenty-first-century rise of a modern, multicultural "southern living." As Wilson shows, there is no singular or essential South but rather a rich tapestry woven with contestations, contingencies, and change.

©2022 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2023 Tantor

Political Bias damages the Product

The Good- much time was clearly spent researching and mining quotes from notorious black and white Southern figures alike. It covers extensively black understandings of the Southern Way of Life, with the author himself noting the lack of focus on that point of view.
The Bad- Like many books on the South, the author’s vitriolic bias towards white culture, and particularly Southerners, is unveiled more and more as the book moves to the modern day. The author spends barely a few minutes on the Civil War and Reconstruction, which in many ways were the defining events of the South, and characterized so much of the next 150 years, even though he refers ever frequently to the unestablished (but apparently repulsive) “Lost Cause”. He never explores any rationale behind White fears of amalgamation, cultural eradication, etc, even if he might disagree with them. Instead, the image the book displays is of an evil, backwards White South who, without any good motives, worked for years to oppress persevering minorities. The narratives of black and white peoples living in harmony under imperfect circumstances are largely characterized as “making pets of black people” or a “racist paternalism”.
The back chapters of the book depart from history, as well as truth, nearly entirely, instead stepping into the realm of politics to chastise those who oppose immigration and demographic replacement. Christian, and by extension Southern, values such as gender roles, patriarchy, or sexual ethics are sneeringly derided as backwards, superstitious, or homophobic. He rails against Donald Trump and traditional conservatives in bald-faced disgust, repeating long discredited lies about Trump’s “praising of Neo-Nazis” and the January 6th protest as an “insurrection”. One would be forgiven for thinking these chapters were a hitpiece from an MSNBC opinion piece, not an exploratory work into the Southern tradition. It’s truly a pity the author spent so much time writing about the South but never spent any time trying to truly understand it.

View from a Southerner

My roots are definitely in the South with many ancestors who fought for the CSA. The book was definitely well researched and provided many divergent views about The South I learned a lot and would recommend the book. It did have one tragic flaw. When it came to Trump it was clear that the author hated Trump. He was less critical of real racists like Bull Connor, George Wallace & Lester Maddux than he was Trump