“As a rich blend of dense research and fluid, engaging storytelling, this book is a remarkable achievement. Pomerantz, in the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas’ Common Ground and Nicholas Lemann’s The Promised Land, tells a sweeping, complex history through the lives of families with triumphs and tragedies of their own. In the balance between grand stories and small, he conveys a portrait of a city and a region that lives very much at the center of the South’s, and the nation’s, conscience."
-The Newark Star-Ledger