LOWER MISSISSIPPI

This splendid Rivers of America series somehow manages to hold up to its high level of excellence. A native of Mississippi has written this story of the lower Mississippi valley as a ""precarious Eden"", fertile but dangerous, in which man has struggled against odds. He deals with successive eras in American history, the influence on the valley, and the characteristic and typical historical figures of each era and section. He begins with DeSoto and the Spanish exploration, goes through shifting boyalties now Spanish, now French, to the American era, the culture of the pre-war deep South, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the modern developments, flood control, etc.