Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South

Marc Notes: Originally published: Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c1990. Publisher Marketing: If you think that nowadays the South is pretty much just a hot Midwest, meet John Shelton Reed: "Americans need to be reminded that there are good-sized regional differences in this country. So I'm volunteering to help with this reminding." Readers on both sides of the Late Unpleasantness will savor this witty and sometimes outrageous collection of essays presenting one Sutherner's viewpoint about what makes the South the South. (Reed on creeping homogenization, for example: "Atlanta represents what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent." Or on Southern manners: "A joke going around here asks why Southern women don't like group sex. Give up? Too many thank-you notes.") Publisher Marketing: A witty and sometimes outrageous collection of essays presenting one Southerner's viewpoint about what makes the South the South. As the Washington Post said, Reed knows his region intimately, probably as well as anyone around, and manages the impressive feat of regarding it both seriously and lightly. Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 08/10/1990 (EAN 9780826207586, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Reed, John Shelton The noted scholar and essayist John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. His numerous books include "One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture"; "Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy"; and "Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South". He also serves as editor of the journal "Southern Cultures". He attends the Chapel of the Cross (Episcopal), in Chapel Hill.