Draws attention to an underappreciated aspect of the mid-twentieth-century South’s leading sociologist. Odum, best known today for his exhaustive documentation of the South’s many deficiencies, also had a warm appreciation of the region’s folk cultures. In this fascinating study, Sanders examines Odum’s pioneering work on African American folklore, showing how he not only learned about his black ‘informants,’ but learned from them.

—John Shelton Reed, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sanders gives new reason for a close re-reading of Howard W. Odum's folklore publications. Odum as mentor and as collaborator underlie his historical and contemporary importance. Sanders argues that folklore, because of its 'people-centeredness' and 'nonhierarchical nature,' was a logical outlet for Odum's intellectual interests in race relations and the new South.

—Karen Baldwin, coeditor/coauthor of Herbal and Magical Medicine: Traditional Healing Today

Changes overcoming southern society in general in the twentieth century are implicated in this illuminating study of Odum.

—University Press Book Review

Sanders offers a fascinating and exhaustive discussion of these novels that will be of great use and interest to a wide range of serious readers, from folklorists to African American literary scholars . . . Sanders more than accomplishes what she has set out to do. The benefit to her readers is a deeper understanding of one of the New South's most important versatile intellects.

—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

A welcome addition to the study of a man who had many talents and who used those talents to do much good.

—Journal of Southern History

Sanders has found a way to reintroduce a figure of significance, one whose career prompted the Washington Post to eulogize him as the 'Eli Whitney of the Modern South.' Indeed, Sander's study of Howard Odum's life and works endures that readers will contemplate his role in shaping the modern South.

—North Carolina Historical Review