The Mind of the South

by W. J. Cash

Paperback, 1960

Status

Available

Call number

975

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Vintage (1960), Mass Market Paperback, 452 pages

Description

Ever since its publication in 1941, The Mind of the South has been recognized as a path-breaking work of scholarship and as a literary achievement of enormous eloquence and insight in its own right. From its investigation of the Southern class system to its pioneering assessments of the region's legacies of racism, religiosity, and romanticism, W. J. Cash's book defined the way in which millions of readers-- on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line--would see the South for decades to come. This fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Mind of the South includes an incisive analysis of Cash himself and of his crucial place in the history of modern Southern letters.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Farree

This is a great study of the Southern Mindset from the end of the Civil War (War Between the States) until 1940. After the "South" kicked out the Yankees and scalawags, how did they bring about "progress" in The South? How did they put the dark-skinned people in a place that they thought was

adequately demeaning? How did they keep the poor whites from an unacceptable competition with black people for their lifestyle and food acquisition? It's all here, along with critiques of the effects of the Southern literary tradition, Unionism in The South, Southern religious traditions and how they affect Southern Middle Class and the Southern Poor People. I notice that "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans is not noted. But this does not detract from the usefulness of this book in the study of the South. I give it --

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LibraryThing member cblaker

An excellent study of the Southern mindset. What Tocqueville was to America and American government Cash is to the South.

LibraryThing member Fledgist

The White South, as explained by a historian.

LibraryThing member goosecap

I guess technically it’s a social history or sociology of the South, but more broadly it’s a great study on the American race problem and race relations. Considering it’s written by a white Southerner during the Jim Crow years it’s very broad-minded. The part that presses on me most was how

he said that black went into white as surely as white went into black; that and his treatment of the class problem, with the aristocrats giving the crackers the race issue as consolation prize. The result is that the crackers are a lot like blacks, but they have the delusion that blacks and whites are like chalk and cheese. This reminds me of a story from a business book. These stories are meant to be a little hard to place in certain ways, but I was curious and I wanted to know if the guy who, coming in the book after several who were obviously rich white guys, was Black in addition to being formerly poor, formerly a jail bird, and with a colloquial nickname. It turns out that Wikipedia says he was a white guy who had been caught using the n-word.

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