Author and Historian

Jonathan M. Bryant

"A deftly conceived and elegantly written local history."
--Choice

"Jonathan Bryant's book is in many ways a model history of a Southern place. It is carefully researched, thoughtfully considered, and written with sensitivity. . . . Bryant's book makes a familiar history more human--and all the more bittersweet as a result."
--Virginia Quarterly Review

The story of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Greene County, Georgia, is a remarkable tale of both fundamental change and essential continuity. In How Curious a Land, Jonathan Bryant follows the county's social, economic, and legal transformation from a wealthy, self-sufficient plantation economy based on slavery to a largely impoverished, economically dependent community dominated by a new commercial class of merchants and lawyers.

How Curious a Land: Conflict and Change in Greene County, Georgia, 1850-1885

University of North Carolina Press, 2004

ISBN  978-0-8078-5614-7 

How Curious a Land