Since 1983 David Wharton has photographed the twelve states that define the American South, focusing his attention on rural and small town culture, vernacular architecture and landscape, the role of religion in Southern life, and the relationship between Southerners, their natural surroundings, and the communities they have built. Small Town South is the result of Wharton's extensive travels throughout the region. No other photographer has devoted so much time and attention to recording this distinctive American place. The author's 116 duotone photographs, combined with his insightful text, convey an overall sense of what the small Southern town looks like at the turn of the twenty-first century. Wharton organizes his study into thematic portfolios that visually address themes such as decline and renewal on Main Street, the intersection of tradition and modernity, local commemorations of the past, the omnipresence of the church in town life, the difficulties of making a living in the New World economy, the display of public murals and memorials, and the iconographic unfolding of community values. Many have likened Wharton's photographic eye and approach to the work of other photographic masters of the South, including Walker Evans, Eudora Welty, William Christenberry, Shelby Lee Adams, and Mike Smith. Just as we turn and return to those artists in reckoning with Southern history and culture, so, too, can we now look to David Wharton as a new pioneer photographer of the small town South in all its simplicity and complexity.