The American South

This massive, colorful, continually absorbing panorama takes a fresh look at the whole of Southern history. It puts special emphasis on ``Negrophobia, for some 200 years the cornerstone of Southern politics and society.'' The authors, both history professors--Cooper at Louisiana State University, Terrill at the University of South Carolina--bring recent scholarship to bear on a host of topics, from guerrilla warfare between royalists and rebels during the American Revolution to slavery, the Southern Literary Renaissance and the decline of front-porch culture in the urbanized Sunbelt. On some issues they take a revisionist stance (e.g., ``Whether patriarchy was the official ideology in the antebellum South is by no means clear''). Although Southern culture remained trapped in Victorianism as late as the 1920s, modernism forced a wrenching self-examination. The authors find ``no Eden in Dixie'' as they survey the New South of persistent racial division, high murder rates, televangelism and low incomes. Photos. (Oct.)