Dan T. Carter is Educational Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at the University of South Carolina and former president of the Southern Historical Association. He is the author of Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and the Lillian Smith Award; The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics; and When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, winner of the Avery O. Craven Award of the Organization of American Historians. He won an Emmy Award for his role as chief historical adviser for the documentary George Wallace: "Setting the Woods on Fire," which is based on his book The Politics of Rage; and he was a primary adviser on the documentary film Scottsboro: An American Tragedy which was nominated for Oscar and Emmy awards.

"Carter's essays present graphic evidence of the extent to which race continues to matter in American politics."-Journal of Southern History

In this penetrating survey of the last three decades, Dan T. Carter examines race as an issue in presidential politics. Drawing on his broad knowledge of recent political history, he traces the "counterrevolutionary" response to the civil rights movement since Wallace's emergence on the national scene in 1963, and detects a gradual intersection of racial and economic conservatism in the coalition that re-shaped American politics from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. Concise yet replete with insight, wit, and often-amusing, always-telling anecdotes, this timely, timeless book is an uncommon blend of important and enjoyable reading.