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Newly Published: Middle Georgia and the Approach of Modernity

New on our bookshelf today:

Middle Georgia and the Approach of Modernity: Essays on Race, Culture and Daily Life, 1885–1945
Edited by Fred R. van Hartesveldt

By eve of the 20th century, Middle Georgia was a rural region transitioning from the aftermath of the Reconstruction Era into the modern age. This collection of new essays describes the lives of the common people of the day. A grisly mass murder underscored issues of race, class and poverty. African Americans struggled for self-betterment against the rise of Jim Crow. Women striving to overcome gender barriers found a hero in a pioneering Georgian female pilot. The government worked to protect communities from the influenza pandemic of 1918. Fighting boll weevils and declining cotton prices, farmers diversified crops and developed of a national pimento pepper industry.