Imani Perry's South to America argues that to understand the United States, you must understand the South, for the region has shaped American history, culture, and politics far more than is commonly acknowledged. Perry, a professor at Harvard who grew up in Alabama and attended school in Massachusetts, returns to the South as an adult, traveling through every state of the former Confederacy. She finds both the beauty and the brutality, from the richness of Black cultural production to the ongoing violence of racial hierarchy. Perry examines how the South's wealth, built on enslaved labor, financed American development; how southern religion shaped national evangelicalism; and how southern migration remade northern cities. She challenges the notion that the South is exceptional, arguing instead that it is quintessentially American. South to America combines personal memoir, historical analysis, and contemporary reporting, with Perry visiting prisons, plantations-turned-museums, and the homes of family and friends. Her prose is lyrical and incisive. The book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the United States beyond comfortable myths about regional difference, and for appreciating the South's ongoing significance.