Includes index

Origin stories. An errand into wilderness: Appalachia ; Mother country: Virginia ; Animated roulette: Louisville ; Mary's land: Annapolis and the caves ; Ironic capital: Washington, DC -- The solidified South. The clearing: Upper Alabama ; Tobacco Road in the Bible Belt: North Carolina ; King of the South: Atlanta ; More than a memorial: Birmingham ; Pearls before swine: Princeton to Nashville ; When Beale Street talks: Memphis ; Soul of the South: The Black Belt -- Water people. Home of the flying Africans: The Low Country ; Pistoles and Flamboyán: Florida ; Immobile women: Mobile ; Magnolia graves and Easter lilies: New Orleans ; Paraíso: The Bahamas and Havana

"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America."--