Additional information
by Edward L. Ayers (Author)
Taking a wide focus, Southern Journey narrates the evolution of southern history from the founding of the nation to the present day by focusing on the settling, unsettling, and resettling of the South. Using migration as the dominant theme of southern history and including indigenous, white, black, and immigrant people in the story, Edward L. Ayers cuts across the usual geographic, thematic, and chronological boundaries that subdivide southern history.
Ayers explains the major contours and events of the southern past from a fresh perspective, weaving geography with history in innovative ways. He uses unique color maps created with sophisticated geographic information system (GIS) tools to interpret massive data sets from a humanistic perspective, providing a view of movement within the South with a clarity, detail, and continuity we have not seen before. The South has never stood still; it is--and always has been--changing in deep, radical, sometimes contradictory ways, often in divergent directions. Ayers's history of migration in the South is a broad yet deep reinterpretation of the region's past that informs our understanding of the population, economy, politics, and culture of the South today. Southern Journey is not only a pioneering work of history; it is a grand recasting of the South's past by one of its most renowned and appreciated scholars.Author Biography
Edward L. Ayers has won the Bancroft Prize, the Albert J. Beveridge Award, and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his books on American history. A former president of the Organization of American Historians, Ayers received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2013. He is the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus of the University of Richmond.
