One man's journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America"-- "We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits...

At age 29, naturalist John Muir hiked alone through the rural South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This volume chronicles his path from Indiana across Kentucy, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He sketched plants and recorded his encounters with botanical wonders. Occasionally he encountered people including former Confederate soldiers and freed slaves.

"Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America--the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation's worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It's these parts of the South, so often ignored,...