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The University of North Carolina Press
384 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 29 illus., 5 maps, notes, index
Ecological Landscapes of the South
2007 Bancroft Prize, Columbia University
2007 Bennett H. Wall Award, Southern Historical Association
The American South is generally warmer, wetter, weedier, snakier, and more insect infested and disease prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With Mockingbird Song, Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth, abandonment, dereliction, resettlement, and reconfiguration, this relationship, Kirby suggests, has the sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region's emblematic avian, the mockingbird.
In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapes--how humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth--as a source of both sustenance and delight.
"Kirby uses a multidisciplinary approach employing information . . . from such diverse fields as agronomy, archaeology, geology, sociology, and even literature to enhance his rich knowledge of southern history in order to enlighten readers about these important, relevant issues. Highly recommended."
--Choice
"[A] brilliant exploration of plants, animals, and people. . . . Mockingird Song has a rousing vitality that makes it destined to be a classic work of environmental history."
--Journal of Southern History
"A grand synthesis with perfect timing. It summarizes, appreciates, and expands on the recent bloom of scholarship that looks at the unique environmental history of the American South."
--Journal of American History
"Not only represents a commendable distillation of decades of scholarship but introduces important new topics and approaches for the maturing field of southern environmental history."
--American Historical Review
"Makes many of the central themes of current scholarship in the field accessible to a general readership. . . . An amiable, entertaining, and pleasantly unpredictable guide to the South."
--Canadian Journal of History
"Kirby's imaginative, interdisciplinary book is a passionate recounting of the centuries-old relationship between the human and nature in the South"
--Rocky Mount Telegram
Paper: $22.50
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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