Southern Crucible The Making of an American Region, Volume II: Since 1877

Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region seeks to fashion a new narrative about the American South. Informed by the most current scholarship in the field, the book offers a balanced look at the region's social, political, cultural, and economic history over four centuries, from pre-contact to the present. Focusing on several major themes in southern history--including the role of racial hierarchy, the role of women and gender, and the impact of immigration--author William A. Link presents the area's distinct history while carefully highlighting its remarkable diversity and geographic, cultural, and economic differences. Fast-paced and engaging, Southern Crucible challenges students to reexamine the region's history and culture and discover the legacy that the South has had on the entire nation's history.

Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region is available in a combined volume and two split volumes.

William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. He is the author of several books, including The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (1992), Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (2003), and Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath (2013).

Volume 2

I: Reconstruction and its Aftermath

13. Reconstruction
14. Industrialization
15. The Crisis of the 1890s
16. The Progressive South

II: World War and Depression

17. The Great War
18. Change and Conflict in the 1920s
19. The Great Depression
20. World War II

III: The Civil Rights Revolution

21. The 1950s
22. The Second Reconstruction
23. Southern Sunbelt
24. Southernizing America