This book provides a deeper understanding of American history and the American South's complicated relationship with that history. It will appeal to scholars and students of American history and the American South, as well as general readers interested in history and its relationship to the present.

Americans in the twenty-first century find themselves searching for new understandings of their history. They seek explanations for chronic political polarization, acute pandemic polarization, social media addiction, heightened concern over global warming and armed global conflict, widening cultural and economic gaps between city and countryside, persistent racial tensions, gender divides, tensions over abortion rights and the public school curriculum, and a forty-year pattern of increasing economic inequality in the United States. Americans are looking for a past that can help them understand the divided and fractious present, a past that enlightens and inspires. In this collection of original essays, Lacy K. Ford uses the past to inform the present, as he provides a deeper, more nuanced understanding of American history and the American South's complicated relationship with it.