A Companion to the American South surveys and evaluates the most important and innovative writing on the entire sweep of the history of the southern United States.:.; Contains 29 original essays by leading experts in American Southern history.; Covers the entire sweep of Southern history, including slavery, politics, the Civil War, race relations, religion, and women's history.; Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.; Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.

The first Southerners : Indians of the early south -- Spanish and French exploration and colonization -- The English colonial south to 1750 -- The origins of slavery, 1619-1808 -- Understanding the south in the Revolutionary era, 1750-1789 -- The south in the new nation, 1790-1824 -- The plantation economy -- The maturation of slave society and culture -- Plain folk yeomanry in the antebellum south -- Religion in the pre-Civil War south -- Politics in the antebellum south -- Women in the old south -- Intellectual and cultural history of the old south -- Sectionalism and the secession crisis -- The Civil War : military and political aspects along with social, religious, gender, and slave perspectives -- Emancipation and its consequences -- Political reconstruction, 1865-1877 -- Economic consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction -- Southern politics in the age of populism and progressivism : a historiographical essay -- The rise of Jim Crow, 1880-1920 -- Women in the post-Civil War south -- The discovery of Appalachia : regional revisionism as scholarly renaissance -- Religion in the American south since the Civil War -- Southern environmental history -- Labor relations in the industrializing south -- The impact of the New Deal and World War II on the south -- The civil rights movement -- The rise of the sunbelt : urbanization and industrialization -- The transformation of southern politics, 1954 to the present.