"Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins is a collection of essays from Brooks Blevins that explore southern history and culture using [the] author's native Ozarks region as a focus. From migrant cotton pickers and fireworks peddlers to country store proprietors and shape-note gospel singers, Blevins leaves few stones unturned in his insightful journeys through a landscape 'wedged betwixt and between the South and the Midwest - and grasping for the West to boot"-- Provided by publisher.

The Ozarks and Dixie : considering a region's southernness --Fireworking down South -- The South according to "Andy" -- Where everything new is old again : southern gospel singing schools -- Against the current : landowners and the fight for Ozarks streams -- The country store : in search of mercantiles and memories in the Ozarks -- Rethinking the Scots-Irish Ozarks : diversity and demographics in regional history -- Revisiting race relations in the Upland South : Lacrosse, Arkansas -- The Spruills : who and why? -- Collectors of the Ozarks : folklore and regional image -- The ordinary days of extraordinary Minnie : diaries of a life on the margins -- A time zone away and a generation behind : Appalachia and the Ozarks -- Back to the land : academe, the agrarian ideal, and a sense of place.