Along with the Charleston Library Society, Buxton Books is proud to cohost Frye Gaillard for a discussion of his new book, written with Pulitzer-Prize winner Cynthia Tucker, The Southern-ization of America.

Frye will be at the Charleston Library Society on Wednesday, June 15 to talk about the role of the South in American politics and culture, answer audience questions, and sign books. Please join us for what is sure to be a fascinating and important exploration of place, politics, and history.

ABOUT THE SOUTHERN-IZATION OF AMERICA:

The Southernization of America, is a compelling series of linked essays considering the role of the South in shaping America’s current political and cultural landscape. The book dives deep, examining the morphing of the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into the Republican Party of today, the racial backlash against President Obama, family separation on our southern border, the rise of the Christian right, the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, the death of George Floyd, and the attack on our nation’s capitol. Galliard and his co-writer Cynthia Tucker, find hope in the South too, a legacy rooted in the civil rights years that might ultimately lead the nation on the path to redemption. Tucker and Gaillard bring a multiracial perspective and years of political reporting to bear on a critical moment in American history, a time of racial reckoning and democracy under siege.

ABOUT FRYE GAILLARD:

Frye Gaillard is a writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and award-winning author of more than 20 books, including Watermelon Wine: The Spirit of Country Music, The Quilt: And the Poetry of Alabama Music, Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters, The Books That Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir, and Go South to Freedom, all published by NewSouth Books. His book A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope and Innocence Lost is forthcoming from NewSouth. He is the winner of the Lillian Smith Award, the Clarence Cason Award for Non-Fiction, the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year Award, and the 2016 Eugene Current-Garcia Award For Distinction in Literary Scholarship.

This is a free event held at the Charleston Library Society.