Originally published in 2006, Mississippi Politics quickly became the definitive work on the state's recent political history, campaigns, legislative battles, and litigation, as well as how Mississippi shaped and was shaped by national and regional trends. A central theme of the 2006 edition was the state's gradual transition from a Democratic surety to a Republican stronghold. For this updated edition, authors Jere Nash and Andy Taggart examine the aftermath of the 2007 gubernatorial and 2008 presidential elections—and all the fireworks in between. This new edition adds a chapter covering the last two years and includes analyses of the 2007 and 2008 statewide, legislative, and federal elections; the resignations of Senator Trent Lott and Congressman Chip Pickering; the indictments of Richard Scruggs and other prominent lawyers; President Barack Obama's influence on the state's 2008 voting dynamics; and the election of House Speaker Billy McCoy.

In post-Civil War years agriculture in Mississippi, as elsewhere, was in a depressed condition. The price of cotton steadily declined, and the farmer was hard put to meet the payments on his mortgage. At the same time the corporate and banking interests of the state seemed to prosper. There were reasons for this beyond the ken of the poor hill farmer—the redneck, as he was popularly termed. But the redneck came to regard this situation—chronic depression for him while his mercantile neighbor prospered—as a conspiracy against him, a conspiracy which was aided and abetted by the leaders of his party. Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics 1876–1925 is a study of the struggle of the redneck to gain control of the Democratic Party in orger to effect reforms which would improve his lot. He was to be led into many bypaths and sluggish streams before he was to realize his aim in the election of Vardaman to the governorship in 1903. For almost two decades thereafter the rednecks were to hold undisputed control of the state government. The period was marked by many reforms and by some improvement in the economic plight of the farmer—an improvement largely owing to factors which were uninfluenced by state politics. The period closes in 1925 with the repudiation and defeat at the polls of the farmers' trusted leaders, Vardaman and Bilbo.

Amidst the Fray: My Life in Politics, Culture, and Mississippi by William D. Billy Mounger with Joseph L. Maxwell, is a firsthand account of state and national political scandals such as the internal conflict of Republicans at the 1976 GOP national convention, the cloud of controversy surrounding former Mississippi Governor Bill Allain and Congressman Jon Hinson, and an inside look at the Watergate cover-up by the Nixon White House staff. Mounger documents his role in President Ronald Reagan's rise to power and how the Mississippi GOP regained momentum against the Democratic stronghold. US Senator Trent Lott said, I consider myself one of the first generations of progeny of Billy Mounger's Republican generation.

The Transformation of Plantation Politics explores the effects of black political exclusion, the sharecropping system, and white resistance on the Mississippi Delta's current economic and political situation. Sharon D. Wright Austin's extensive interviews with residents of the region shed light on the transformations and legacies of the Delta's political and economic institutions. While African Americans now hold most of the major political offices in the region and are no longer formally excluded from political participation, educational opportunities, or lucrative jobs, Wright Austin shows that white wealth and black poverty continue to be the norm partly because of the deeply entrenched legacies of the Delta's history. Contributing to a greater theoretical understanding of black political efforts, this book demonstrates a need for a strong level of black social capital, intergroup capital, financial capital, political capital, and a human capital of educated and skilled workers.

In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leadrs strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South.

For most states, the repeal of prohibition meant a return to a state of legally drunken normalcy, but not so in Mississippi. The Magnolia State went dry over a decade before the nation, leaving bootleggers to establish political and financial holds they were unwilling to lose. For nearly sixty years, bootlegging flourished, and Mississippi became known as the "wettest dry state in the country." Law enforcement tried in vain to control crime that followed each empty bottle. Until statewide prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, illegal booze fueled a corrupt political machine that intimidated journalists who dared to speak against it and fixed juries that threatened its interests. Author and native Mississippian Janice Branch Tracy delivers an intimate look at the story of Mississippi's moonshine empire.