An NPR Best Book of 2022

The SOUTHERNIZATION of AMERICA

Bringing a multi-racial perspective from years of political reporting, award-winning authors Frye Gaillard and Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker have carried forward the thesis of John Egerton’s seminal work, The Americanization of Dixie in their new collaboration, The Southernization of America, to consider the role of the South in shaping America’s current cultural and political landscape. They examine the morphing of the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into today’s Republican Party, the racial backlash against President Obama, family separation on our southern border, the rise of the religious right, white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, the death of George Floyd, and the attack on our nation’s capitol. With democracy under siege, they find hope in the South’s legacy rooted in the civil rights years that could ultimately lead the nation on the path to redemption during this critical moment in America’s turbulent history.

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Upcoming Events

March 7 – Alabama Writers Hall of Fame Induction, Tuscaloosa, AL
March 22 – Independent Music Collective keynote, with songwriter James McMurtry, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL
April 5 – Mobile Book Festival, writers panel with Adam Prince and Caleb Johnson, main branch, Mobile Public Library
April 17 – Book talk on Heroes and Other Mortals and The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter, NewSouth Bookstore, Montgomery, AL
April 26 – Book signing for Heroes and Other Mortals, The Haunted Bookshop, Mobile, AL
May 4 – Book talk on Heroes and Other Mortals, Dauphin Way United Methodist Church, Mobile, AL

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Now Available in Paperback and Audiobook
NPR Great Read of 2018 & winner of F. Scott Fitzgerald Museum Literary Prize and the Alabama Authors Award

“A child of the Sixties and one of the leading civil-rights reporters of his generation, Gaillard has given us a riveting tour along the fine line between history and journalism.”

– Howell Raines, Pulitzer Prize winner, former executive editor, The New York Times

Now Available from Vanderbilt University Press

A powerful collection of conversations between a journalistic icon and some of the finest writers of our time … Nikki Giovanni, Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pat Conroy, and others.

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Now Available from Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury

The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter: Essays on the President’s Books

With these reflections on a singular American life, coeditors Mark I. West and Frye Gaillard have assembled a powerful collection of essays on the more than 30 books written by the former president. The distinguished contributors to this volume include Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Cynthia Tucker, decorated Southern historian Vernon Burton, and award-winning poet Charlotte Pence.

Coming April 1, 2025, University of Georgia Press

“… a true journalistic and literary gift – compelling, beautifully-crafted profiles of crusading, committed people, some more well-known than others… Even while writing about some of life’s darkest situations, Gaillard seeks and finds the best of the human spirit, the best in us. His remarkable ability to get to the core of people’s souls, to crystalize what makes them human and extract the essence of their goodness leads to a lesson for all. Heroes and Other Mortals is compelling, inspiring, affirming, relentlessly hopeful. We’ve needed this book.”

– Mark Ethridge, former Managing Editor, The Charlotte Observer