Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South

The most important thing to bare in mind while reading this book is that while it builds on "Honor and Violence in the Old South" (a classic) it adds another dimension to the discussion. It throughly examines the origins of Southern violence with an eye to how this lead to a unique justice system in the South. The particulars come together to impact blacks and socialize them to value honor (or respect as it is refered to on the street) as a social imperative. The creation of chain gangs and other devices added to a reformed ( after the Civil war) legal system that helped whites find other methods to control blacks sans the institution of slavery. Of course this is a scholarly work which makes it a bit dry, but it is never confusing or too hard to follow. There might have been some omissions made because some of it is just too detailed, while the section comparing the justice systems created in the Northern States to their Southern counterparts could have been expanded. These are small gripes as most of this book contains great stuff on the South, sociology of race relations, or how society interacts with "justice".