I read this book based on my reading of General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy by Dr. Jeffry Caulfield. As portrayed in the Caulfield book, Dombrowski was in the eye of the segregationist hurricane which swept the South in the 1950's and 1960's following the Brown decision by the Supreme Court. This book gives a different perspective on the civil rights movement in the South. Such classics as Where Rebels Roost by Susan Klopfer and Gothic Politics in the Deep South by Robert Sherrill tend to give a condescending attitude toward the South. By contrast, Dombrowski describes a different version of events, a version which shows that the "behind the scenes" activities for Southern liberalization were very methodical and proceeded at a businesslike pace and with very steady progress all the way from the New Deal right up until the more radical 1970's. The book makes a case that, if there were actually such a thing as The New South, then Dombrowski had a very strong case for its paternity. Dombrowski, as many may already know, had close personal links to Justice Hugo Black of Alabama who was himself a pioneer of a more open-minded attitude to the race problem in the South.

A poet’s memoir of taking an unplanned trip to the Bahamas and meeting a fishing guide who changed his life: “A splendid book.”—Jim Harrison in The New York Times Book Review Chris Dombrowski, a poet and passionate fly-fisher, had a second child on the way and an income hovering perilously close to zero when he received a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would eventually lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it. By the time Dombrowski meets him, though, Pinder has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder’s stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the bonefishing guide’s life. “A poet and Montana-based fly-fishing guide recounts his trip to the Bahamas, where he met an aging guide who taught him about fish and life…loosely links reflections on his experiences catching and releasing bonefish, the history and geography of the Bahamas, the construction of fishing rods, stories he has told his children, and the difference between fishing or hunting for sport and for dinner.”—Kirkus Reviews “Thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

ÒA factual record assembled in depth, this is an important contribution to the archives of integration and nondiscrimination.Ó ÑPublishers WeeklyÒ . . . well-researched and informative . . . Ó ÑJournal of Southern HistoryÒ[Reed's] book brings a fascinating band of progressive Southerners into focus, some of them for the first time, and follows them from the late thirties into the sixties. They bear following, and remembering. So does this book.Ó ÑSouthern Changes