The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi

Read it.

Well written, funny, sad & factual. Fairly represents both sides of slavery and brings us inside the heads of whites and blacks.

Well, I have only read half of the book at this point, but I am a bit tired of constantly reading about how wrong Natchez reviews its past, and oh how virtuous the author sees the world as it should be. Well, we all know by now that this entire country was build on slave labor and cheap immigrant labor...like everywhere else on this planet during that time. I felt the author's critique uncalled for. A lot of stories are funny, and sad...the book is well written, so I don't want to totally dismiss this book, but your constant virtue signaling was uncalled for.

Arrived in excellent condition. Thank you for quick response!

This book has lots to say, and says it with humor and style. It is a fascinating bunch of stories, an insightful examination of American race relations, and a very funny book. The subject is the Mississippi town of Natchez -- population just 15,000, but much larger in history, and in much much larger in its own mind. Natchez once had more millionaires than anywhere else in the United States. Their wealth came from the slave-based cotton economy, and they built beautiful houses, around which the town's current culture and key industry -- tourism -- is based. The contradiction between a culture that glorifies the Old South, and the racial reality upon which that South was based, is the fundamental subject of the book. But it is not a sociological examination. It's a series of stories about very interesting people, Black and White, and about their relations with each other. It illustrates the difficulty of racial relationships, even given good will on both sides. Beyond that, it's written with a keen journalistic eye and a deep knowledge of Natchez. Terrific read.

Intriguing people. Can it be such a short time ago that this happened.

I thought I was from the deepest south, since my mother was raised on a cotton farm in Alabama, but I was wrong...Natchez is indeed deeper. And wilder. Richard Grant is my new favorite travel writer. He skillfully interlaces the contemporary Natchez social landscape with a unique history of one black slave whose story illuminates the complex and contradictory socioeconomic story of racial relations in the deep south, and specifically in the Mississippi Delta. Grant's position as an ex-pat Londoner via NYC gives him a unique POV that he articulately incorporates without making the story about him. He mines the colorful nature of Natchez without descending into the simplistic, cliché-ridden, class-bound narratives so many other writers offer up. I gulped this book down like a bonbon while still assimilating the fiber-filled, factual stories of real Mississippians of all colors and temperaments. A truly great read.

William Faulkner and Eudora Welty are two of my most favorite authors in whose Mississippi-based writings have made references to Natchez, Mississippi, a place that has intrigued me in their writings and now intrigues me even more as a result of my having read this amazing book. And to think that the author is British! Oh my, the descriptions of the people who currently live in Natchez are priceless, filled with absolutely rich irony. There are two completing garden societies. Naturally they are dominated by white women although they have become a bit more open to allowing black women in. But I certainly didn’t know that the city was liberal enough to have a gay black man as its mayor. Then what makes this book especially rich is this: Richard Grant provides a rich, well-research look at slavery including the socially advanced societies from which slaves were captured. This book is right up at the top of my all-time best reads. Oh, yes, and when you get to page 64, the 45th president is mentioned in terms of how he might have approached the slave market.

It's all about racism in beautiful town - Natchez