"The Land of Cotton: Culture, Landscape, and the Fabric of Southern History is a sweeping environmental and cultural history of cottons power in the American South. More than the regions signature crop, cotton was a material, symbolic, economic, and ideological force. The books central claim is that the culture of cotton-the ways planters, laborers, boosters, tourist boards, musicians and a host of others represented the crop-shifted not only with the political moment but also in response to the physical world. Cotton lands eroding away and becoming forests, labor and technological upheaval, and the rise and fall of built environments all changed the rhetorical possibility of the thin white fiber. Cotton festivals, country songs, and sharecroppers memories shaped and were shaped by the conditions of southern landscapes. By grounding this history in two distinct southern landscapes, the South Carolina Piedmont and the Mississippi Delta, The Land of Cotton reveals how these local conditions shaped cottons cultural power and practical uses. Spanning 150 years, this study shows how the Souths most iconic crop remained a literal and figurative site for debates over environmental change, political ideology, and historical memory"-- Provided by publisher.