eBook The South and America since World War II download

Cobb offers great insight to southern history post-WWII. He covers everything: politics, economics, culture, religion, arts, ideology, internal conflict, hypocrisy, identity, and evolution. At times, his information is unorganized and scattered. He also offers a lot of data without always creating solid context for it; he expects you to figure it out. Most chapters are enjoyable and informative. A few are tedious and take a little effort to get through. As a southern reviewer, it's a great collection of information on the "modern" South, both its contributions to the betterment of the country, as well as its hindrances.

The book came today, it was earlier than expected. The book is in very good condition; no underlining or marking inside. While I have yet to read the book the reviews are excellent. A friend and I will have completed a joint reading of the South beginning with Cash's Mind of the South, picking up recent history with Reconstruction to the present day Hats off to the seller.

VERY good book!

James C Cobb is a Southern historian. His book The South and America since World War II focuses on the years after 1945. This book takes a detailed look at the American South’s segregation in the way that it affected blacks. In this book he highlights elections too. He chooses World War II because he finds that World War II is a severe turning point in American history. Black soldiers who came home to America after World War II finally saw change in treatment. The book covers a wide range of years in gratuitous detail. Cobb set out to point out every wrong done to blacks in the American South, and show how those slights affected them throughout the years.
Cobb’s writing style was detailed and methodical. Cobb often launched into excessively detailed explanations. Cobb writes with the tone of someone vehemently trying to make a point. His explanations aim to preemptively head off any counter-argument his detractors might have. Cobb’s writing is rigid and opinionated. Cobb leans to the left on almost all of his policies and it shows in his writing. Much of the text reads like a tiresome legal argument. Overall I would say Cobb’s tone is a suboptimal for a history text.
The text is organized reasonably well. Cobb sticks to a chronological method for the most part. Cobb tells the story in the correct order, but his delivery is poor. He tells his story in the most boring way possible, attempting to inject his own left-wing opinion into every point he makes. The book is weighed down tremendously by Cobb’s habitual insistence to lace his prose with his political opinions. The habit is made worse by the fact that he seems to regard all Southern conservatives with contempt. Overall, the diction and tone of this book took away from the historical value.
A good example of the partisan writing style of Cobb can be found on page 184. He demonizes a governor for not wanting to censor history and denounce support of former segregationist. Although Cobb wrote a plethora of content, much of it is obscured by his partisan lens. The feeling of one-sidedness pervasive throughout this book. Cobb consistently demonizes Southerners. The large amount of detail in the book is often due to Cobb injecting his own political quips in the book, which negatively affect reading.
The sources Cobb used were exhaustive. He uses both primary and secondary. He pulled from many different works. The way Cobb presented his arguments and evidence was ineffective because his liberal tone devalued the information, making it feel tainted with partisanship. Despite Cobb using factual sources, he sometimes takes too many liberties in his interpretation of the facts.
The contemptuous tone Cobb uses for the South grows almost as tiresome as the subject matter he chooses. Chapter 12 focuses briefly on a segregated prom, which is important for multiple reasons. The mention of the irrelevent prom fits the general theme of the book: Cobb wants to endlessly rail against racism. Cobb seems to mindlessly lurch from one claim of racism to the next. Despite most of the claims of racism being justified and true, Cobb does not do a good job of tying narratives together or being entertaining. His book is a rambling, incoherent tome that aims to make race the forefront of every subject.
Cobb’s book lacked entertaining images. There were a smattering of boring pictures, often basic shots of people talking. There are a few useful maps featured too.
Historical texts exists to inform the reader with facts and anecdotes. Cobb’s approach seemed to be different. Cobb writes as though the only thing that matters are his perceived injustices in the world. It seems as though Cobb’s goal in this book was to only cover the events in history that could somehow be used to push his liberal beliefs. Cobb did not actively seek to report the truth, he stuck to a set of narratives that allowed him to repeatedly demonize the things he did not like: conservatism, segregationism, and small government.
The most interesting portion of the book came around page 124 when discussing the election of 1968. George Wallace was mentioned heavily in these chapters. Cobb does an excellent job talking about Wallace's campaign strategy. He points out that Wallace could have had a legitimate shot to win the South because of the Deep South states that would have voted for him. He also points out his path to victory relied on the border states. Cobb does an excellent job quoting the New York Times here. This is particularly useful because having a major publications thoughts at the time are far more important than his own thoughts. The best thing about the Wallace portion is the large number of consecutive facts about his campaign.
Overall, Cobb does not select his subject matter well at all. He focus too much on fringe issues. He also writes in a partisan tone. Cobb seems to think this is acceptable because he is railing against people like George Wallace, but overall his insistence to write like this taints the value of this book as a historical piece.

Book even better than advertised