Tidwell and Sanders have compiled Sterling Brown's observations of the American South during World War II. Brown was a poet and essayist who wrote about race in American society. After Brown's death in 1989 Tidwell and Sanders used a table of contents in his papers to compile his disparate writing into this work. The introduction discusses Brown's background as a key to understanding these observations, but the reader is left to infer what influence his successfully upwardly mobile and mid-Atlantic background had on his interpretation of the predominantly poor rural southerners he observed. No discussion is made of Brown's placement within the “talented tenth” and how this might have affected his writing about those who were not exposed to the same social and economic opportunities.

The works are collected in the tradition of de Tocqueville, a man moving across a great expanse trying to record and synthesize what he sees. However, the editors' unwillingness to speak for the author means that there is very little argument in the book. It is left as a collection of observations, the rich context of a region in a distinct period of time, but should be seen as a resource of observations, rather than a series of arguments or conclusions based on what Brown saw. It is a book without soul – observations about the lives of many people whom Brown met but who are not brought to life on the page.

The book is divided into six sections and the editors argue that the sections are distinct but when interwoven make a social commentary about black life in the South. The editors' claim there is an implicit methodological framework to the book, but the first section, for example, appears to be a collection of interviews with a diverse group across the region, without any unifying theme.

The “Jim Crow Journal” section aims to compare the US constitutional promise with the practice of southern race relations while at the same time opposing the image of the victimized Negro. However, Brown's writing brings into question whether his background is the appropriate frame of reference for the southern black experience. He does not posit a solution when he brings into question how blacks should become equal. The “Gone with the Wind” piece is the only section to make a sociocultural claim arguing against romanticization of southern history. He does this most poignantly in describing the return of Williamsburg, Virginia to its colonial past, to create a tourist destination, by evicting black tenants from their homes. In a rare moment of reflection he argues that in order to display white history they are displacing the existing black community and culture.

It is unclear who wrote the epilogue to the book, Brown or the editors, but it does not serve to conclude the piece. This work is not placed within the greater literature of observations of the Jim Crow South, or literature written about southern experience. Instead the book should be seen as a loose compilation of experiences that can be used to enrich the reader's understanding of a region at a very specific point in time.