Spurred on by the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, William A. Link's Atlanta, Cradle of the New South examines the city's rebirth after the war and argues that Atlanta was a model of recovery for other southern cities. More small-scale history than regional or national in analysis and content, the book frames Atlanta as “a battleground in a larger, national struggle” about the meaning of the Civil War and locates the struggle to define postwar race relations in an urban setting (3). The tip-off for the kind of general treatment Link has written comes in the book's blurbs, which two leading historians of the South provide. Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, writes, “From Sherman's March to Gone with the Wind, Atlanta plays a central role in Americans’ shared memory of the Civil War.” The University of South Carolina's Lacy Ford calls Link's book “the definitive account of Atlanta” and of its comeback as a center of economic and cultural life. Considering Ayers's high praise, one wonders where the railroads are in Link's assessment of Atlanta's economy and the New South's promise.

The bare facts of Atlanta's resurrection are well known and well told by Link; they form one of the more substantial chapters in the seemingly limitless annals of the New South. Link, essentially, divides Atlanta's postwar rebound from the rubble into two main spheres of suffering: there was Atlanta's ruination when the Yankees came in 1864 and Atlanta's descent into race riot in 1906. The former is the more controversial, and Link assigns blame primarily to General William Tecumseh Sherman for Atlanta's destruction, not to the Confederate defenders who built fortifications so close to civilian housing that citizens and soldiers alike became targets. Atlanta, the reputed “city too busy to hate,” was born in sectional fratricide (138). Apparently, the city was too busy to pray as well. Only glimpses of Atlanta's powerful black church, and no ritual Lost Cause motifs, enter the fray.

Indeed, much of the change that drove Atlanta's phoenix-like reemergence came from outside city limits rather than from within. Sherman's invasion, occupation, and burning of Atlanta baptized the city's genesis in blood. Following the war, the Freedmen's Bureau worked with ex-slaves to give African Americans a bid at economic freedom. Later in the narrative, the American Missionary Association arrived to build the infrastructure of Atlanta's elite black colleges. In 1881, Sherman, now a guest, took center stage again when he attended the city's International Cotton Exposition, a showcase for Atlanta's New South image.

Rather than retell the much-trampled “redemption narrative” of the white New South that “became part of postwar Atlanta's identity” (54), Link insists “there remained other – unacknowledged – narratives that could be told about the war and its meaning” (60). Out of the city's ashes arose claims and counterclaims about the future of the South's race relations. Ordering racial identity was the fundamental project for whites and blacks. For African Americans, Union victory and the end of slavery afforded a chance to be free of white supervision. Black people's imperative, writes Link, was to turn Atlanta into “a center of African American leadership in the South” (62). Most whites, he notes, “believed in Atlanta's unique ability to … redefine itself as a southern place” and to control former slaves and crush Reconstruction (61). After a series of brief chapters dotted with roiling fights about racial equality and rival versions of the New South, the book culminates in more sanguine violence. In 1906, following decades of rapid social and economic flux, a race riot claimed scores of black lives. The real battle for Atlanta, Link insists, came in the aftermath of the war as competing visions used the city in a tug-of-war between black and white goals. “The central symbol in the obsession with constructing the past,” he concludes, “was Atlanta” (198). The city simultaneously stood for New South economic recovery and for black Atlanta's strong cultural and educational institutions.

Link's thin book – only 264 pages long including scholarly apparatus – is filled with useful information and is richly detailed about its subject's racial legacy. Some historians may look in vain for women's roles in Atlanta's recovery. Scarlett definitely does not live in William Link's Atlanta anymore, except for the obligatory nod to Gone with the Wind at the end. With the sesquicentennial anniversary of the 1864 Atlanta campaign approaching, however, Link's study offers engaging reading and reminds students of the Civil War not to ignore the racial implications of the war.