This work is a collection of twelve essays written primarily by outstanding Southern poets (many who were part of the Fugitives) and educators including Donald Davidson, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and Allen Tate. Davidson was able to cast the central American conflict as industrialism against agrarianism. Therefore, at least in the context of the American empire, the conflict no longer was North verses South, but financial capitalism verses subsistence living. The Agrarians (as these men were later called) saw industrialism as a threat to humanity, to freedom, and to culture. What worried the Agrarians the most was industrialism’s redefining who man was. Man no longer was considered a human being, but a useful tool to be employed to make money for others who held control of the system. In other words, in an industrialized society, Americans are deluded into thinking they are free autonomous beings while in reality they are slaves to the state and to the banks. This is a must read.