C. Vann Woodward's active career, now spanning nearly forty-five years as a historian of the American South, is remarkable both for its impact and for its durability. Since the publication of his masterful Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, in 1951, Woodward has been regarded by his colleagues, supporters and detractors alike, as preeminent in his field--the one historian whose works must be mastered and reckoned with by serious students of Southern history. And with The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955), followed by essays and reviews of consistently high quality and readability in such periodicals as Commentary, Harper's, and the New York Review of Books, he has achieved a popular readership and public acclaim as well. In a profession in which--at least in the twentieth century--sweeping reinterpretations of historical periods rarely stand long without serious challenge, Woodward's reading of Southern history as discontinuous, his analysis of the nature of...