The Second Wave: Southern Industrialization from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Edited by Philip Scranton. Economy and Society in the Modern South. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2001. Pp. [xvi], 310. $50.00, ISBN 0-8203-2218-0.)

Henry Grady's vision of a New South rested on the belief that regional industrialization would stimulate economic development and prosperity. Toda there is an ongoing debate about exactly what constituted southern "newness and whether the New South ended at some point, persisted, or became "newer" in the twentieth century. The notion of a "Second Wave" suggests that World War II provides a point of demarcation between the New South and a measurably different southern economy. Thus, World War II exigencies stimulated a more regionally comprehensive economic strengthening based on industrial development that significantly boosted the southern economy. This era, beginning around 1940 and lasting through the remainder of the twentieth century, is the focus of the essays collected in The Second Wave. These essays originated at a 1998 Georgia Institute of Technology conference on southern industrialization, and Philip Scranton, the book's editor, has masterfully organized them into a cohesive presentation. Written from the perspectives of economics, geography, history, law, and sociology, most are case studies that address aspects of southern industries such as cotton textiles, carpet, paper and pulp, petrochemicals, and aircraft and automobiles.

The book begins with essays by Thomas A. Scott and Richard S. Combes that describe the aircraft industry as one of the first to emerge in the Second Wave. World War II provided the immediate impetus, or "take-off," for this industry. The Bell Aircraft Corporation's B-29 manufacturing plant at Marietta, Georgia, produced 663 of these bombers, but the military idled the plant immediately after the war. The Korean conflict ultimately prompted Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to take over the Marietta plant in order to produce large numbers of federally contracted aircraft.

Subsequent essays examine the economic, political, and social conditions that collectively comprised the Second Wave. Karen Ferguson traces the role that elite blacks in Atlanta played during and immediately after World War II in facilitating the rise to middle-class status of some blacks while leaving others behind. Contributions by Randall Patton and Toby Moore analyze how social and economic change affected regional development of the carpet industry and the demise of the cotton mill village system, respectively. Moore, in particular, provides insight into the process through which community structure changed in response to economic conditions, while some aspects of community culture remained virtually unchanged--a particularly powerful paradigm for the Second Wave thesis.

Two case studies examine natural resource-based industries. William Boyd's essay describes how the southern pulp and paper industry became a global player. Craig F. Colten's essay on the Texas petrochemical industry, conversely, focuses on environmental issues. His work on the environmental counterpoint of the petrochemical industry makes an important argument that many people and agencies in Texas did object to pollution during the rise of this powerful industry. The last industry-specific essay in this book is Karsten

n Hulsemann's description of the development of southern automobile plants, principally in Tennessee. Gregory Hooks's more quantitative concluding essay examines overall economic development in the South and reinforces the book's proposition that federal investment did indeed influence southern economic growth.

If there is something missing here, it is an essay that places the immense twentieth-century buildup of the Gulf Coast oil and gas industry more directly in Second Wave context, and perhaps an essay on the role played by other federal projects--like NASA and Department of Energy installations--in southern economic development. Still, this is a thought-provoking set of diverse yet complementary studies that tell a remarkably consistent story. Southern industrialization during and following World War II persisted throughout the twentieth century and effectively changed the South's economic status. As Gavin Wright notes in his afterword, southern economic growth and expansion has not translated into a loss of regional distinctiveness. The South remains southern, but since World War II it has become a proportionally stronger player in the national and global economy.

CHRISTOPHER J. CASTANEDA
California State University, Sacramento