Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906

Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906. By Edward L. Ayers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. x, 288 pp. $13.95 (paper). In Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906, Edward L. Ayers offers an excellent distillation of his prize-winning Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. As in the earlier work, Ayers depicts the South as a region coming to terms with the complexity of modern life. According to Ayers, contact with modernity spawned a series of complicated, often contradictory, reactions among southerners. After Reconstruction, the South experienced both conflict and cooperation between blacks and whites, men and women, town dwellers and rural folk, and Old South reactionaries and New South boosters. The New South that partially fulfilled its social and economic promise was largely the result of these complex interactions. Ayers examines in detail economic developments, racial attitudes, public education, religion, and everyday life. By allowing the participants to speak for themselves, Ayers gives readers an excellent glimpse of southern society during this tumultuous time. While this version of this book lacks the elaborate documentation of the larger work, Ayers provides an excellent bibliographic essay that would be a good starting point for anyone interested in late-nineteenth-century southern history. Provocative and well written, Southern Crossing would be an excellent addition to any undergraduate reading list or a fine introduction for the interested layperson. More serious students should continue to consult the original work. -RICHARD D. STARNES, Auburn University

Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 1998
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