How the South Finally Won the Civil War: and Controls the

Rating:
Summary: Psycho
Review: Charles Potts was my landlord (slumlord) for 2 years. He's completely whacked! The image of his office, which looked like an interrogation room, haunts me to this day. No, I have not read this book.

Rating:
Summary: There's so much unused potential here . . .
Review: This could have been a great book, unfortunately the author got in the way.

Mr. Potts traces the supposed rise and rise and rise of the South in American politics, starting before the American Revolution and continuing to the present day. His overall thesis is that the South (as he defines it) has all but taken over the US government. He has well documented the statistics and quotes he uses, but from that point the book goes downhill.

Mr. Potts sadly belongs to the "Vendetta School of History". It is not merely enough for him to prove that someone's logic was flawed or that they were motivated by less than noble interests. Instead he spends time dredging up every possible accusation of impropriety ever lodged against that person. Mr. Potts seems to feel that rather than just proving someone was wrong, he must prove they were evil, and that makes the book very tiring at points.

For example, in a discussion of the development of the Chilsom Trail, he drifts off into a vitrolic critique of the word "cowboy", which he claims is an ethinc slur against black cattlemen. Even if this is true (and he offers no citations to support his claim), it is wholly irrelevant to his discussion of Texan domination of the cattle industry. Mr. Potts also engages in just plain name-calling at some points, such as suggesting Lee Atwater died of a brain tumor because he was, "so hateful that his own brain said that's enough," on page 69. I was no fan of Lee Atwater, but comments such as that are unnecessary and do nothing to further the overall purpose of the book. Additionally, Mr. Potts manages to make several outright bigotted statements against southern Europeans and Catholics. This might have been understandable if they advanced his argument, but they seem to have been inserted for no other reason than to be insulting.

Mr. Potts also overreaches himself sometimes in an effort to prove that Southerners control everything. He makes the claim that the entire Front Range area is nothing more than an annex of Texas, but he really offers no proof of that beyond discussing Texan dominance of the cattle and oil industries. He also expands the definition of the "South" to include any place ever influenced by people from the area of the Confederacy, no matter how long ago it happened. E.g. he includes southern California on the grounds that the L.A. basin was pro-Confederate in the Civil War. However, since probably less than 10% of modern-day Californians can trace their heritage in the state back that far, it seems silly to try to include it.

There are many other problems with Mr. Potts' book, and that is too bad, as I think his general thesis is correct. The South (which I would define as the former Confederate states) does appear to wield disproportionate power in the American political system. However, to find the worthwhile gems in the book, one must slog through a tremendous amount of mud. I would recommend it only to people who are intensely interested in the subject or who are fans of Oswald Spengler, whom Mr. Potts appears to feel is the pinnacle of historical analysis.