My Tears Spoiled My Aim: And Other Reflections on Southern Culture

The funniest sociologist in the history of the world--especially since he's funny on purpose. Even though he's a bit conservative for my taste, he is the sort of cranky, sensible, and idiosyncratic sort of Southerner that warms the cockles of my cranky, sensible, and idiosyncratic Southern heart. Reed's work is (for me, anyway) the ideal combination of academically sound analysis and hilarious entertainment. I agree with the reviewer who said that the book is getting a bit dated, but I wouldn't want to see it updated. It is a portrait of its own point in time and valuable for that reason. What Professor Reed needs to do is write another insightful and funny book along the same lines as this book, "Whistling Dixie," and "Minding the South." I'd like to see him revisit some of his musings about the changing South, from the perspective of another few years of corporate American mainstreaming. As a Southern child I was taught that I would catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so I'll just say "Oh, sir, pleeeeease?" In the meantime, we'll have to make do with Roy Blount's "Long Time Leaving."

I am from Brooklyn, New York and spent four years in a rural Virginia town. I was informed I was the third Jew to have lived in the town. Too bad, this book didn't exist when I lived down there. I just read it and couldn't put the book down and stop laughing. I learned about Professor Reed from the book Culture Shock USA, The South. An invaluble book for those who want to do business with Southerners, or move down there and become "Damn Yankees" (as my Alabama cousins call them). (You know you are liked, when you are promoted to Damn Yankee). To the reviewer from Birmingham, England. Explore the South and enjoy!

A Brit like me needs all the help he can get when it comes to understanding the South - and John Shelton Reed is the man to supply it. Readers may find the review from a reader in Vermont a little misleading - this book is not written for laughs although it is often very amusing. Reed is no Bill Bryson - but neither is Bryson a John Shelton Reed.The book is a wonderful collection of short esssays that illuminate and explain "Southern-ness". Pinning down Southern characteristics - or indeed even where "The South" begins and ends - is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. However, that does not prevent Reed making the attempt with humor and considerable scholarship.Most of the chapters have previously appeared in journals or are based on such papers. Reed's tone is light and entertaining even though the underlying purpose is serious. Perhaps the most overtly scholarly is the opening chapter that deals with the geographical extent of "The South". It is well adorned with plates taken from a very wide range of academic journals showing the incidence in the contiguous states of various factors suspected of reflecting Southern-ness. All the usual suspects are here: self-perception, cotton cultivation, incidence of lynchings, members of Baptist chruches, and 'Southern Living' readers. However, Reed has other less familiar indicators of Southern-ness such as where kudzu grows, ratio of active dentists to population, states mentioned in country-music lyrics, ratio of homicides to suicides, or chapters of the Kappa Alpha order. It makes for fascinating reading and a shifting pattern of where the South is. Other chapters deal with such disparate issues as the depiction of Southern women in Playboy magazine, violence in country music, the Southern diaspora, and life and leisure in the New South. Reed's real achievement is to disguise his scholarship as an entertaining and informative read.This is a very different kind of book from Reed's 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South. That was more an eclectic collection of facts, both familiar and unfamiliar, grouped loosely around broad themes. It was more for dipping into than reading straight through. The present book is more limited in its aims and obliquely explores a few specific questions in greater depth.All in all, this is an immesely enjoyable book that is full of surprising revelations about the nature of Southern-ness. Some of the material on which it is based is getting a little dated (the bulk of sources are from the 1970s and early 1980s) and we can only hope that Reed is moved to bring out a new edition.

John Shelton Reed does it again in this hilarious book. I have finally become addicted to his writing which is some of the most accurate and funny I have seen in quite some time, since I have been in academia for most of my life now. Anyone living in the South or those who have left and remember it well (like myself) will love this gem of a book.