ISSUE: Winter 1992
Published more than half a century ago, The Mind of the South by W.J. Cash has never gone out of print and is acknowledged as a classic investigation and/or indictment of the region. The latest edition of the Cash classic is available as a Vintage Book with a new introduction by Southern historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown, an introduction about which critic Louis D. Rubin has this to say: “Wyatt-Brown’s introduction is the sanest overview of The Mind of the South I’ve yet encountered. It points up the specific and real worth of this remarkable book” [$12.00]. The inequities of the South were the subject of Stetson Kennedy’s Southern Exposure, a book originally published in 1946, containing such sections as “The Problem of the South,” “All’s Hell on the Southern Front,” and “The Road Ahead.” A new edition of the book has been published by Florida [$16.95 paper]. The South is also the subject of a third reprint, Thomas D. Clark’s The Southern Country Editor, a story of journalism from the time of the Civil War to the 1930’s, which is also an account of 80 years of Southern life and thought. Originally published in 1948, The Southern Country Editor is now available in a new edition from South Carolina [$29.95 cloth, $14.95 paper]. Of reprints and new editions of books about the Civil War, there is apparently no end, with the latest including Emory M. Thomas’s The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, which historian Paul Escott deemed “one of the most interesting books written about the Confederacy,” a work again available as a paperback reprint from South Carolina [$9.95]. Commanders of the Union Army, namely McClellan, Sherman, and Grant, are the subject of T. Harry Williams’ book of the same name in which the noted historian examines how the temperaments and moral courage of the three Union generals affected their military leadership [Elephant Paperbacks $7.95]. The most famous charge of the most famous battle of America’s bloodiest war is the subject of George R. Stewart’s Pickett’s Charge: A Microhistory of the Final Attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, a new paper edition of which was recently issued by Houghton Mifflin [$10.95], Harvard has come out with a paper edition of Gary B. Nash’s Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720—1840. This is the first book to trace the fortunes over more than a century of the earliest large free black community in the United States and winner of the 1988 Book Prize of the Society for Historians of the Early Republic [$14.95]. Yale has a new edition of Robert A. Dahl’s Democracy and Its Critics, winner of the 1990 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award given by the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the United States during the previous year on government, politics, or international affairs [$35.00 cloth, $17.00 paper]. A revised edition of Paul C. Light’s The President’s Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Reagan is available from Johns Hopkins [$38.50 cloth, $12.95 paper]. An addition to Bison Book Series is Janet Robertson’s The Magnificent Mountain Women: Adventures in the Colorado Rockies [$9.95].
Willard Sterne Randall’s Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor was the first major biography of the notorious traitor of the American Revolution to appear in 35 years at the time of its original publication in 1990. To the Minneapolis Star Tribune the book was “without question, the definitive biography of Benedict Arnold.” A new edition is available as a Quill paperback [$15.00]. Quill has also reprinted Thomas Parrish’s Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War, the Personal Story which The New York Times called “lively and original” [also $15.00]. First published by Little, Brown, Emily W. Sunstein’s Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality was named as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and praised for bridging “the gap between the popular and the scholarly” by Cambridge Review. Johns Hopkins recently published a paper edition of this biography [$15.95]. Hopkins has also come out with a paper reprint of William St. Glair’s The Goodwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family [$16.95]. Norton has published a paper edition of Kenneth A. Lockridge’s The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of Virginia, 1674—1744, an essay describing the emergence of a Virginia gentleman in the late 17th and early 18th centuries [$10.95]. A recent Vintage Book is Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place, a classic African-American memoir about growing up in Mobile, Alabama in the 1920’s and 1930’s by a highly acclaimed novelist, biographer, music, social, and literary critic [$9.00]. A recent Penguin book is Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska and John Phillips, a chronicle in letters of a passionate love affair between two celebrated women in Edwardian society [$10.95], Cambridge is offering a new edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Something of Myself and other Autobiographical Writings, edited by Thomas Pinney [$10.95 paper]. Literary Paris of the 1920’s lives anew in James R. Mellow’s Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, one The Los Angeles Times called “rich and compelling.” A new edition of Charmed Circle is being offered by Houghton Mifflin [$12.95 paper]. Collier Books has republished, with a new introduction and epilogue, Frederic Morion’s The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait, an account of one of the most famous families in Europe over the past two centuries [$12.95 paper]. Nebraska’s Bison Books has a new edition of Hal Bridges’ Lee’s Maverick General: Daniel Harvey Hill with an introduction by Gary W. Gallagher [$11.95]. Edith Wharton’s A Motor-Flight through France originally published in 1908 describes the travels of the novelist by “motor car” just after the turn of the century. A new edition has been published by Northern Illinois [$28.00 cloth, $12.50 paper].
