Jack Bass

Jack Bass

Jack Bass is author or co-author of seven nonfiction books about the American South.  His works have focused on Southern politics, race relations, and the role of law in shaping the civil rights era.  He is professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston.

A graduate of the University of South Carolina, Bass studied as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University.

In announcing Bass the winner of the 1994 Robert Kennedy Book Award for Taming the Storm: The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., Arthur Schlesinger Jr. acclaimed it as "a strong and evocative work that illuminates the struggle for racial justice."

In reviewing Bass’s most recent book, STROM: The Complicated Personal and Political Life of Strom Thurmond (co-authored with Marilyn Thompson), reviewer Steve Weinberg wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that readers “will be rewarded with first-rate reporting, crisp writing, and enough interpretation to conclude that—love him or hate him—Thurmond’s life mattered.”  In Foreign Affairs, Walter Russell Mead said STROM “opens a window into a region and a culture that foreigners and non-southern Americans must understand to have a clear picture of how the United States works.”

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