,.,....• The Kentucky Encyclopedia,John E. Kleber, Editor in Chief, T. D. Clark, hard and soft, along with such esoterics as metes and bounds and the L. H. Harrison,]. C. Klotter, Associate Editors. Lexington: Univer• Middleton offset. ln subject-matter the volume begins with Irvin Abell, sity Press of Kentucky, 1992. xxxiv, 1045 pp. $35.00. a surgeon, and ends witJl· an article on Felix Kirk Zollicoffer, a Con• federate general who was killed at Mill Springs in January 1862. There FORTY YEARS AND MORE HAVE PASSED SINCE THIS reviewer first entered is also a bibliographical essay which includes archival and biographi• the· Commonwealth of Kentucky. He was attracted to the friendliness cal materials for further investigation, and a generous listing of refer• of the people, to the sharply differentiated landscapes of the terrain, ence works arranged by topic, and an )Xtensive index. End-papers are and to the astonishing variety of places to explore. From the magical maps showing counties and geogi-aphic regions, important landmarks, carvings of the Rockcastle River, where complaisant limestone has been and pioneer trails. gently sculpted by the insistent touch of a flowing stream; to the gentle hills and green pastures of the Bluegrass, where bright white fences sur• The editors easily and delightfully met their assignment to help round fields containing prime horseflesh, and cobblestone pikes lead the reader to understand Kentucky and its people. No brief sampling the motorist through tunnels of trees whose branches meet overhead; of its contents can convey the intensely factual information which is to the taller, flat-topped elevations of the Knobs; to the fertile plateaus here, or the readable style in which it is presented. Still, some sense of the Pennyroyal; to the then un-formed Land between the Lakes, Ken• of its coverage may be gained by a few examples. Bluegrass music is tucky presented a strikingly enjoyable treat to the fascinated visitor. indigenous to Kentucky, but bluegrass itself in an import, Eurasian in origin, and fundamental to the state's economy and also to the estab• Equally as exciting to an embryonic historian only weeks out of lishment of the American Union; nineteen Kentucky counties bear the graduate school was the wealth of evidence that the past matched in names of men killed in 1813 at the River Raisin; novelistjohn Fox,Jr., significance and diversity the natural beauty of the land. Shakertown, was the first writer in America whose works sold more than a million Keeneland, and the Cumberland Falls vied with the Transylvania cam• copies; inhabitants of the animal kingdom, suc;_h as the thoroughbred pus and Cheapside and the state capitol. The visitor soon understood horse Man O' War and Colonel Sanders' pressure-fried chickens, are the message of a preacher who, wishing to induce his hearers to mend granted appropriate treatment. their ways so as to insure a seat within the pearly gates, described Heaven as "a Kentucky of a place." The encyclopedia is a masterpiece of selection and condensation. It is a treasury of fact and fun, with nearly every page provoking a chuckle The year 1992 marked the bicentennial of the Commonwealth's ad• and a curiosity for a lecture-quip or coffee conversation. lt expresses mission as the fifteenth state in the American Union. Part of the celebra• the wit and wisdom of Thomas D. Clark, historian-laureate widely be• tion of that milestone was the publication of an encyclopedia of loved for finding humor as well as meaning in the records of the past. Kentuckiana. The Bicentennial Commission's mandate was "to help Ken• To this project he contributed the harvest of his life-long devotion to tuckians better know and understand their history, traditions, and over• the human dimension of history. Among the most helpful entries in all contribution to the evolving American culture." It was to reflect much the encyclopedia is Clark's fifteen-page summary of Kentucky's develop• more than two centuries of the Commonwealth; it was to include en• ment. It is not surprising that among the details of economic growth tries about "the arts, communications, economics, education, folklife, and cultural improvement he would include a reference to a 1988 lawsuit literature, politics, religion, sciences, sports, and transportation." The in which the state's Supreme Court declared the public school system volume is a generous slice of Southern life and culture with a distinc• unconstitutional. tive Kentucky flavor. Dr. Clark concluded his overview with a statement which is both There are approximately 2,000 entries, of outstanding individuals warning and hope. "Looking back from the historical perspective of two in all areas of human endeavor, of all the state's counties, of towns and centuries," he said, "Kentuckians must view their commonwealth's past cities, of hotels, newspapers, schools, churches and temples, drinks both as one marked by ridges and valleys of public experience. Politics in 686 MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY BOOK REVIEW 687 the state have often been more rowdy than constructive, often sullied Repressible Conflict, 1830-1861 (1939); Bell Irvin Wiley's The Plain Peo• by chicanery, if not criminality," Clark wrote. Citizens "have made ple of the Confrderary ( 1943); Frank L. Owsley's Plain Folk of the Old Sout]: phenomenal progress in developing and supporting their social and ( 1949); David M. Potter's 17ze South and the Concurrent Majority ( 1972); J. cultural institutions, in generating a public awareness of the fragility Eugene Cenovese's From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts of the environment and the exhaustibility of their precious natural and in the Making of the Modem World (1979); and Woodward's reflections, human resources." Thinking Back: The Pe-i'ils of Writing History ( 1986). -~,.,. I As the pages of this encyclopedia reflect, Thomas Clark said, "Ken• 'The Fleming lectures have, of course, varied widely (even wildly) tuckians over two centuries have established their place in history, de• in style and substance," says Professor Noggle, who has heard many of cade by decade, and incident by incident, always with the winds of the speakers: "lectures by generalists and particularists, storytellers and change blowing strongly in their faces." As the Commonwealth enters cliometricians, challenging revisionists of conventional wisdom and tife• its third century, it can take pride in its past, and learn the lessons that some echoers of songs sung before" (p. 7). Some of the lecturers were only the years can teach. All who enjoy knowing the men and women "mediocre" and did not deserve publication; some declined to submit who inhabit our history, and who discern the greatness and the imagi• their work to the press. Although Fleming "lecturers have ranged-from nation as well as the human cussedness they possessed, will be grateful white-supremacist neo-Confederates to Yankee Marxists" (p, 5G), a re• to the Kentucky Bicentennial Commission for the labor and the love vealing sameness rather than diversity stands out. In over fifty years of that brought forth an immensely useful compendium to make easier lectures by the nation's best and brightest, only one African-American, the study. John Hope Franklin, and one white woman, Drew Gilpin Faust, .trn~. been Fleming lecturers, though one other woman was invited. Only Wake Forest University DAVID L. SMILEY Genovese and Louis R. Harlan devoted their attention to black history as such, and no one focused exclusively on women. There was no racist or sexist conspiracy-at least none that an outsider (or reviewer) should even speculate about. The selections mirrored the profession and its - The Fleming Lectures, 1937-1990: A Historiographical Essay, by Burl Nog• prevailing taken-for-granted assumptions, what Carl Becker elsewhere gle. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. ix, 86 pp. called the climate of opinion. As Professor Woodward noted in Think• $19.95. ing Back about his graduate-school mentors and their favorite scholars in the 1930s: "each of the masters held up as models for emulation IN 1935, ONE YEAR AITER EIGHTEEN HISTORIANS GATHERED in Atlanta, Geor• seemed virtually of one mind .... joined in vindicating;justif)1ing, ra• gia, to establish the Southern Historical Association, Louisiana State tionalizing, and often, celebrating the present order" (p. 4). University inaugurated the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lecture Series. The intention of both the SHA and the Fleming Lectures was the same- to Race and gender are only the most striking examples of' the zeit• encourage and showcase historical scholarship. ln 1937 Charles Rams• geist at work among academic historians invited to LSU as Fleming dell, a Texan, a Ph.D. from Columbia University and a student of the Lecturers- and all but three have been professional historians. (The Old South, gave the first Fleming Lectures. These he later expanded exceptions: Louis D. Rubin, Jr., and Lewis P. Simpson, distinguished and published as Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy (1944). From students of' Southern literary history, and psychologist Robert Coles. 1937 to 1990, as Professor Burl Noggle of Louisiana State outlines suc• author of books about children and dcsq.\Tcgation.) The South's histo• cinctly and stylishly, forty-nine scholars have delivered the Fleming ry has been honeycombed by an intensely felt and practiced religion, Lectures-with Avery 0. Craven and C. Vann Woodward making en• yet only Francis Butler Simkins ( 1956) and Walter B. Posey ( 1964) con• core appearances. Two-thirds of the lecturers have published their work, ccnr rutcd 011 1-cligion. No lecturer probed cth uicit y, other than to talk usually as revised and expanded books, many of which became minor about white attitudes. usually about race.Just as surprisingly, given the classics in Southern history. Consider a sampling of titles: Craven's The South and the nation's obsession with the killing fields of the Civil War, G89 688 MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY BOOK REVIEW .