Americans in the twenty-first century find themselves searching for new understandings of their history. They seek explanations for chronic political polarization, acute pandemic polarization, social media addiction, heightened concern over global warming and armed global conflict, widening cultural and economic gaps between city and countryside, persistent racial tensions, gender divides, tensions over abortion rights and the public school curriculum, and a forty-year pattern of increasing economic inequality in the United States. Americans are looking for a past that can help them understand the divided and fractious present, a past that enlightens and inspires. In this collection of original essays, Lacy K. Ford uses the past to inform the present, as he provides a deeper, more nuanced understanding of American history and the American South's complicated relationship with it.

‘In this sweeping study, Lacy K. Ford provides the insight, clarity, and boldness that we have come to expect from him. Written with the broad and deep knowledge of a preeminent scholar of southern history, this book explores subjects that include race and slavery, southern exceptionalism, and the lasting impact of the US Civil War. This is essential reading for students and scholars of southern history.’

William A. Link - University of Florida, and author of Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region

‘A preeminent scholar of Southern history, Lacy K. Ford grapples with questions of meaning and provides crucial context for the understanding we seek. He marshals an impressive knowledge about the South, American identity, and racial inequality, and offers much to ponder and debate. With a willingness to bring such hard honesty to the importance of studying history, and to understanding both the South and America, Ford also delivers inspiration. Essential reading for those interested in this subject.’

Orville Vernon Burton - Clemson University, and author of Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court

‘Rarely does a book utilize debates about historiography and scholars reckoning with the American past to speak to the present moment as effectively as does Lacy Ford’s Understanding the American South. Ford, a preeminent scholar on the antebellum American South, uses this collection of essays to get at a difficult - but timely - question: how do the American people come together and stitch together what we in the historical profession call a ‘usable past’? … Each of the essays is worth reading on their own, but together, they allow Ford the opportunity to reconsider well-known works … and how they all help, in varying ways, historians to understand the evolution of American ideology and government.’

Robert Greene, II Source: Society for US Intellectual History

‘… these eloquently written essays provide all those in pursuit of understanding the past, present, and future with much to consider.’

Walter L. Buenger Source: Journal of Southern History