Confessions of a Copperhead: Culture and Politics in the Modern South

Mark Royden Winchell has been likened to the Southern Agrarians because of his wide-ranging literary distinction and his willingness to defend the traditional South. The cause of the South, he has written, “is the cause of us all.” This, his 16th and last, posthumous book, has waited more than a …

Mark Royden Winchell has been likened to the Southern Agrarians because of his wide-ranging literary distinction and his willingness to defend the traditional South. The cause of the South, he has written, “is the cause of us all.” This, his 16th and last, posthumous book, has waited more than a decade to see the light of publication. This work fully displays Winchell’s lightly worn learning, lively style, and original insights. You will find nowhere such an original and comprehensive representation of the recent South in matters both political and literary. Winchell plows new ground by the acre on such significant Southern topics as J. William Fulbright, Herman Talmadge, Martin Luther King, M.E. Bradford, popular and high culture, and contemporary history. In the process he provides new perspectives on such matters as the Democratic and Republican parties, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson the Vietnam War, conservatism, liberalism, neoconservatism, libertarianism, and American literary culture. The publication of this book, Mark Winchell’s legacy, is itself an important event in not only Southern, but American history.