Pursuant to my goal of reading more southern history and literature, I’m creating an index to get an at-a-glance idea of areas I’ve read more in or have ignored. I’m planning on developing this more in 2022!
LAND, LITERATURE, and CULTURE
The Sunny South: of Mountains, Coastal Plains, and Too Many Mosquitos
(Books on the southern landscape, ecology, etc)
Southern Classics
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
American Other: On Southern Culture and Being Southern
I’ll Take My Stand, the Southern Agarians
Away down South: A History of Southern Identity, James C. Cobb
The Burden of Southern History, C. Vann Woodward
Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Bill Malone
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, Tony Horwitz
The Redneck Manifesto: How Hicks, Hillbillies, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats, Bill Goad
Drivin’ with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the birth of NASCAR, Neil Thompson
Southern Literature
A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest Gaines
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
Where I Come From: Stories of the Deep South, Rick Bragg
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest Gaines
The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
The Memory of Old Jack, Wendell Berry
The Unvanquished, William Faulkner
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
The Best Cook in the World: Tales from my Mama’s Table, Rick Bragg
The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming, Rod Dreher
THE SOUTHERN STORY: HISTORY
Crackers, Captives, and Cavaliers: Peoples of the South
Poor but Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites, Wayne Flynt
Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin
Travels with Foxfire: Peoples, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia, Phil Hudgins
Dixie’s Forgotten People: the South’s Poor Whites, Wayne Flynt
Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Jim Webb
Not Yet Gone with the Wind: the Dixie Frontier and the Antebellum Southland
The Spanish Frontier in North America, David Weber
The Miracle of New Orleans, Brian Kilmead
The Other War of 1812, John Cusick
Days of Hope and Hubris: The War
Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America, William C. Davis
A People’s History of the Civil War, David Williams
The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, Kenneth Noe
Johnny Reb’s War, David Williams
These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War, John Sledge
Ruin, Reconstruction, and Revanchism
The South Since the War, Sidney Andrews
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, C. Vann Woodward
The Fiery Cross: The Klan in America, Wyn Craig Wade
Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Klan, Nancy MacLean
Southrons of Note
Hank Williams: The Biography, Colin Escott
Robert E. Lee, Roy Blount
Reading Freely 
A few more you might want to add:
Our Man in Charleston – Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey
The Free State of Jones – A True Story of Defiance during the American Civil War by Victoria E Bynum
The Sea King – The Life of James Iredell Waddell by Gary McKay
The Rebel Raiders – The Astonishing History of the Confederacy’s Secret Navy by James Tertius deKay
Monitor – The Story of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the man whose Invention changed the Course of History by James Tertius deKay
Plus, of course, Thursday’s upcoming review…. [grin]
Gotta read them first! 😀 Interested in most of those, particularly the Free State of Jones….that was a story that erupted several times during the war, from Winston County distancing itself from Alabama’s war effort to west Virginia “seceding” from Virginia to become another ‘official’ state. Amusingly these days it’s more connected to southern identity than Virginia proper, because it’s been colonized and denatured by the cancer on the Potomac…
Plenty more to come. You know that I have a ‘thing’ about rebellion & stuff… [lol]
Forgot one!
Clydebuilt – The Blockade Runners, Cruisers and Armoured Rams of the American Civil War by Eric J Graham
Civil War naval action a niche interest of yours? 😉
Nice list! This is a topic I’d like to read more about, although probably more focused on Appalachia (where some of my family is from).
Nice! Appalachia is almost a place of its own — like Texas, actually, both southern and yet something distinct. There’s some good video content on youtube about Appalachian culture, particularly from a guy named David Hoffman.
I concur. My dad grew up in the foothills of the Smokies and I am a proud citizen of the Lone Star State.
Eudora Welty?
I’ve heard her name but am not familiar with any of her works. Care to recommend any?
i haven’t read a whole lot of her either, but she’s pretty well known, mostly as a short story writer, i think, altho she did write novels as well… probably considered old school…
According to her Wikipedia entry, a sense of Place is very important in her writings. Sounds promising!
If she were considered old school, so much the better!
Her short stories are prime local color of the Mississippi she grew up in.
There’s a couple of non fiction boos there that I’d like to get. Not interested in Flannery O Connor or a biography of Stonewall Jackson?
I have a collection of O’Connor coming up in the CC. Very interested in Jackson, but I want to do a biography of him as part of a series of others..