A Turn in the South

Naipaul's turn in the South takes him from Atlanta to Charleston, from Tallahassee to Tuskegee, from Jackson to Nashville to Chapel Hill. As he travels, he senses the strong pull the past exerts on inhabitants of the region: the weighty legacy of the land and history that seems to inextricably root to their homeland every Southerner he meets. Naipaul's journey is fueled by the ideas, the thoughts, the beliefs revealed in his probing conversations with Southern politicians and journalists, farmers and college professors, preachers and businessmen, waitresses and judges--who are his guides into the complex, often hidden, life of the South. ISBN 0-394-56477-4: $18.95.