If you think that nowadays the South is pretty much just a hot Midwest, meet John Shelton Reed: "Americans need to be reminded that there are good-sized regional differences in this country. So I'm volunteering to help with this reminding." Readers on both sides of the Late Unpleasantness will savor this witty and sometimes outrageous collection of essays presenting one Sutherner's viewpoint about what makes the South the South. (Reed on creeping homogenization, for example: "Atlanta represents what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent." Or on Southern manners: "A joke going around here asks why Southern women don't like group sex. Give up? Too many thank-you notes.")