I think every Southerner should read the history works of C. Vann Woodward. He brings a great style to writing history with a sense of humor and definitely "irony" as he so frequently says in the book. I read this first, then read BIRTH OF THE NEW SOUTH 1877-1913. My motives for reading this period were to discover the events and attitudes that shaped the lives of my family. Oh yes, I understand more now than I did as a youngster, when I asked my grandmother about those alive back in the day.....she told me, "Let the dead rest in peace. They had their troubles when alive, and deserve to be left in peace." And that puzzled me for years, as well as piqued my curiosity. Well, this book helped answer WHY, and I can intuit much from family events.
The volume I read was the digital or ebook version. For that edition, I give both titles only FOUR STARS, not docking the imminent historian but docking the poorly edited digital form. They did NOT edit out the scanning errors. So an "n" becomes an "h" and a "1" becomes an "l"....I'm pretty good at editing or spotting errors, but occasionally some combinations created untranslatable phrases.
One feature that I like in both Woodward books was the annotated reading list of southern writers, including the author's point of view. I kept a pen close so that I could write down book titles for further reading focused on the periods that interested me. If you have an interest in Southern history, and seek further reading material, you could choose those chapters for their book reviews.
Woodward was one of the first to submit that the South was different from the rest of the country: That her people experienced military defeat in a country that expected to win all its wars. That the South endured generations of wide spread abject poverty in a land that the world regarded as a land of plenty. That the South had more in common with the nations of the world which had all endured vicissitudes of defeat, turmoil, loss of prestige, empire, and power. Woodward also treats the South's "peculiar institution" of slavery in these books, since it is inseparable from our history. His award-winning THE STRANGE CASE OF JIM CROW is appropriate reading for that specific part of Southern history.
When I finished the last chapter of BURDEN on my Kindle, I was near 60% of the whole volume. The rest was annotated bibliography, footnotes, and special addenda. I picked my way through that, sampling as I went. I regard C. Vann Woodward as a marvel. His writing reveals his own enthusiasm and dedication to his subject, honesty in telling the "real" truth of history, with smoke screens blown away. His eyes are wide open and you recognize his integrity. His timeline helped me understand what happened when. Although it is not a chronologically based book, he paints his picture of the BURDEN layer by layer, or thread by thread, until at the end he reveals the whole image. No doubt he loved the South, and it comes through in his writing.
In my case, I picked up the Woodward books to discover my family roots, or to make the world they lived in real to me. If you have the same sort of genealogical interest, and you are Southern, then read his books and follow your personal trail back in time. Woodward is a great companion on your journey.
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