Published in 1971, Georgia's Last Frontier presents the history of one of the state's least developed regions. During the 1830s, Carroll County was a large part of Georgia's most rugged frontier. James C. Bonner examines how life in this isolated region was complicated by the presence of Native Americans, cattle rustlers, and horse thieves. He details how the discovery of gold in the Villa Rica area resulted in drunkenness and violence, but also laid the foundations of mining technology that were later used in Colorado and California. The region remained isolated until after the Civil War, when a rail line was constructed to stimulate cotton cultivation. With the development of the railway, Carroll County's frontier traditions waned in the early twentieth century.

Published in 1971, "Georgia's Last Frontier "presents the history of one of the state's least developed regions. During the 1830s, Carroll County was a large part of Georgia's most rugged frontier. James C. Bonner examines how life in this isolated region was complicated by the presence of Native Americans, cattle rustlers, and horse thieves. He details how the discovery of gold in the Villa Rica area resulted in drunkenness and violence, but also laid the foundations of mining technology that were later used in Colorado and California. The region remained isolated until after the Civil War, when a rail line was constructed to stimulate cotton cultivation. With the development of the railway, Carroll County's frontier traditions waned in the early twentieth century.

Published in 1964, A History of Georgia Agriculture describes the early land and labor systems in the state. Agriculture came to Georgia with the first settlers and was largely directed toward the economic self-sufficiency of the British Empire. James C. Bonner's portrayal of the colonial cattle industry is prescient of the later open-range West. He also clearly shows how shortages of horses and implements, poor plowing techniques, and a lack of skill in tool mechanics spawned the cotton-slaves-mules trilogy of antebellum agriculture, which in turn led to land exhaustion and eventual emigration. By the 1850s the general southern desire for economic independence promoted diversification and such scientific farming techniques as crop rotation, contour plowing, and fertilization. Planting of pasture forage to improve livestock and hold soil was advocated and the teaching of agriculture in public schools was promoted. Contemporary descriptions of individual farms and plantations are interspersed to give a picture of day to day farming. Bonner presents a picture of the average Southern farmer of 1850 which is neither that of a landless hireling nor of the traditional planter, but of a practical man trying to make a living.

This first book-length examination of cultural change in the Georgia Pine Belt challenges the conventional view of this area as an unchanging economic backwater by examining its postbellum evolution from a self-sufficient economy to one largely dependent upon a single commercial crop - cotton. Before the Civil War, the Piney Woods easily supported a population of mostly yeomen farmers and livestock herders. After the war, a variety of external forces invaded the region, permanently altering the social, political, and economic landscape. Mark V. Wetherington's in-depth study sheds new light on the region's socioeconomic history and encourages a closer examination of post-Civil War change throughout the southern Pine Belt.

The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. With A Man in Full, the time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real-estate syndicates, cast-off first wives of the corporate elite, the racially charged politics of college sports--Wolfe shows us the disparate worlds of contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most phenomenal, most admired contemporary novelist. A Man in Full is a 1998 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

"Anyone in search of the spirit of the Old West will find it in this book. In fact, any student in college taking a course in the history of the West or even in a general history of the United States should be required to read Dick's book; and when once the student had sniffed its atmosphere, the required would no longer be necessary."--Georgia Historical Quarterly "An entertaining and comprehensive collection. . . . The reader is sure to put Dick's book down with a fresh realization of the vigor, adventure, humor, tragedy, and endeavor that went into the development of our western country."--Annals of Wyoming "A highly satisfactory and completely disarming approach to the history of the West."-- Utah Historical Quarterly "A delightful anthology of western Americana by that great collector of social history, Professor Everett Dick."--Social Education "A great book for those who enjoy the history of how our West was won"--The Western Horseman