The Night of the Old South Ball and Other Essays and Fables is the first collection of essays by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Edwin M. Yoder, Jr. These 88 perceptive and entertaining essays are drawn primarily from The Greensboro Daily News, The Washington Star, and The Washington Post, where they originally appeared.
The Night of the Old South Ball and Other Essays and Fables is the first collection of essays by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Edwin M. Yoder, Jr. These 88 perceptive and entertaining essays are drawn primarily from The Greensboro Daily News, The Washington Star, and The Washington Post, where they originally appeared.
Whether discussing Darwinism and the snail darter, defending Thomas Jefferson against charges of miscegenation, going on a “Gilbert and Sullivan toot,” or defining the quintessence of grits, Yoder evokes unexpected levels of meaning from ordinary events. A lifelong student of history and a southerner by heritage, he is deeply concerned with his native south and with the trend to mythologize or “Dixiefy” Dixie. He finds in the works of W.J. Cash and C. Vann Woodward touchstones “for defining (or refining) one’s regional imagination. Like a mineral trace they run in our blood….” (cover photo by David Rae Morris)
PRAISE FOR THE NIGHT OF THE OLD SOUTH BALL
“Among Ed Yoder’s many virtues, all of which are displayed in this volume, is the detachment of a man who knows that however fast newsprint fades, it does not fade faster than the importance of much that preoccupies journalists. He husbands his passions and invests them in questions of law and literature….That is why he elevates journalism to literature.”
George F. Will
“Edwin Yoder is among the most cultured and readable men writing today, and his collection can only bring pleasure to those who take pleasure from fine writing and hard thinking.”
William F. Buckley, Jr.
“Ed Yoder writes about everything from grits to Gilbert and Sullivan with grace and charm, and with a lover’s affection for the English language.”
James J. Kilpatrick
ABOUT EDWIN M. YODER, JR.
Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., was graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, England. He was editorial writer with The Charlotte News, editorial page editor of The Greensboro Daily News and later The Washington Star. He wrote a nationally syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group. In 1979 Yoder was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.