Honor and Slavery:
Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South
Kenneth S. Greenberg

Book Description | Table of Contents

ADDITIONAL REVIEWS:

"This volume works with great imagination and complexity to show how elite men understood themselves as slave owners and as men."--Ted Ownby, Journal of Southern History

"Greenberg's study is easy to praise. It is readable and insightful. . . . More important, it is a fine introduction to the new linguistic approaches to history, wherein dull and seemingly trivial customs can be made fun and important."--John Mayfield, Georgia Historical Quarterly

"This is a valuable book. . . . [V]ivid and persuasive. . . . [G]iven the engaging quality of Greenberg's writing, coupled with his notable ability to tell a story, the book should receive a wide audience among historians and an appreciative one among students of the nineteenth-century American South."--Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., American Historical Review

"A piercing--and decidedly offbeat--look into the mind of the Old South. . . . Greenberg handles his arguments deftly, full as they are of odd digressions, to show [a culture] with a unique code of custom and communication. . . . Charged with ideas, this is a cheerfully speculative and valuable addition to the library of the Civil War."--Kirkus Reviews

"Many of Greenberg's observations offer revealing contextualizations. Particularly interesting are chapters on death and on the duel and its rather less drastic variation, the tweaking of the nose, a symbol of masculine honor."--Publishers Weekly

"This is an unusual book, and one that isn't easily categorized. For a historical work it's short and uncharacteristically wry, but Greenberg writes with a lexicographic and historical earnestness of purpose that doesn't allow him to slip into irony at the expense of his subject matter. . . .there's an awful lot of significance to be gleaned from the marginal and the superficial."--Toby Lester, The Boston Book Review

". . . should be required reading for anyone interested in its [Southern] life and culture before the Civil War."--Library Journal

"Greenberg provides an in-depth study of the language of honor in the Old South. He skillfully demonstrates how this language embraced a complex system of phrases, gestures, and behaviors that asserted authority or maintained respect. . . . His work gives a clear view of what it meant to live as a courageous free man in the Old South and should be required reading for anyone interested in its life and culture before the Civil War."--Library Journal

ENDORSEMENT:

"A genuinely fresh contribution to our understanding of the culture of the Old South . . . Greenberg writes with charm, verve, and vigor."--Eugene Genovese

Return to Book Description

File created: 4/24/2008

Questions and comments to: webmaster@press.princeton.edu
Princeton University Press