Reviews
"What emerges from these individual pieces is not the career history of one newspaperman, but a beautifully nuanced portrait of a community, a region and a people at an undeniable turning point." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Not often can we see history being written. Seldom can we go back in time with one who was there. Rarely can we watch events push the past into the future. But through Gene Patterson's newspaper columns, published in the Atlanta Constitution from 1960-1968 and now collected in The Changing South of Gene Patterson, we can witness how the South of yesterday became the South of today."
--St. Petersburg Times
"[These] more than 3,000 columns represent one of the most impressive bodies of work in the journalism of the 20th century. . . . Shows journalism at its best."
--National Press Club website
"His ambition for the South, and the tone with which he would express it, is immediately clear."
--Oxford American
"An admirable compilation of primary sources for understanding a Southern mind amidst the civil rights movement. . . . As historians work to understand the Southern white mind amidst the changes of the second Reconstruction, the strengths, inconsistencies, and equivocations of Gene Patterson will be a useful guide."
--H-Florida
" A collection of columns written by one of the most gifted writers of our time. . . . We often hear newspaper reporting described as the first draft of history. . . . Rich reading for anyone interested not only in history, but also in excellent journalism that helped to tell the stories of race in America in the mid-20th century."
--Nieman Reports
"A viable contribution to civil rights scholarship and media history. . . . Most important, though, is that a study of a moderate southern journalist like Gene Patterson reveals a much more contemplative and socially conscious South: a South doing its best to come to grips with the demands of equality and morality."
--Southern Historian