This is the most comprehensive synthesis of the political history of the American South during the Progressive Era. Originally published in 1983, this work represented the master work of a gifted historian's career of reflecting on this period of the region's history. This new printing is accompanied by an insightful foreword by William  A. Link, addressing the work's continuing relevance for today's students.

“For an understanding of what was happening and what southern progressivism was all about, [Grantham] has produced a monumental history and resource which may be added to and reinterpreted, but it is not likely to be superseded.”
–David Chalmers, Reviews in American History

“The rich detail and comprehensiveness of Grantham’s examination of the South in the first two decades of the twentieth century makes this a definitive work on the topic.”
–Library Journal

“[Grantham’s] masterful synthesis of forty years of scholarship makes the study preeminent in the field.”
–James A. Tinsley, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“Southern Progressivism is a must for students of the twentieth-century America and the South.”
–Choice

Until his death in 2004, DEWEY W. GRANTHAM was the Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History Emeritus at Vanderbilt University. He was the author of The
South in Modern America: A Region at Odds, The Regional Imagination: The South and Recent American History, and The Life and Death of the Solid South. He served
in executive positions in the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association.