What makes the South Southern? Is it the history of slavery and segregation? The unrelenting heat? NASCAR? All this and more, says the University of Georgia historian Cobb (The Most Southern Place on Earth
). In this riveting read, Cobb charts the twisting, shifting history of Southern identity and how folks, Southern and non-Southern, have thought about the region. Cobb devotes a good bit of space to writers—from antebellum novelist John Pendleton Kennedy to William Faulkner— and their conceptions of the South. And Cobb doesn't focus only on white Southerners' understanding of their region. He also traverses Maya Angelou's memoirs and the activism of Martin Luther King Jr., and he introduces entrepreneurs like Sherman Evans and Angel Quintero, two black Charlestonians who launched Nu South sportswear, which melds icons of the Confederacy with images of African nationalism. Occasionally, Cobb strikes a pedestrian note, to wit, his discussion of recent fights over the place of the Confederate flag, which concludes mildly that battles over "symbolic memory" show that "the politics of the past is always part of the politics of the present." Further, one might wish that Cobb had devoted more space to discussions of pop culture: Southern food, Southern music. Hopefully, he has a sequel planned. (Oct.)
