In this riveting political and social history of the American South during the second half of the twentieth century, acclaimed journalist Curtis Wilkie tells the story of a region and a man -- himself -- intimately transformed by racial and political upheavals. In 1969, in the wake of the violence surrounding the civil rights movement, Wilkie left the South and vowed never to live there again. But after traveling the world as a reporter, he returned in 1993, drawn by a deep-rooted affinity with the territory of his youth. Here, he endeavors to make sense of the enormous changes that have convulsed the South for more than four decades. Through vivid recollections of landmark events, Dixie becomes both a striking eyewitness account of history and an unconventional tale of redemption full of beauty, humor, and pathos.

Curtis Wilkie, a native Mississippian, graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1963. He worked for the Clarksdale Press Register in the Mississippi Delta through the rest of the 1960s, during the height of the civil rights movement. A national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe for twenty-six years, he has covered eight presidential campaigns and was the paper's Middle East bureau chief from 1984 to 1987. Wilkie is the coauthor, with Jim McDougal, of Arkansas Mischief and has written for many national magazines, including Newsweek and The New Republic. He lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans.