Contents -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION: The Fetish of Number: Narcissism, Economics, and the Twentieth-Century Southern Ego -- CHAPTER ONE: The Fetish of Surplus Value: Reconstructing the White Elite in Allen Tate, William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe -- CHAPTER TWO: Stealing Themselves Out of Slavery: African American Southerners in Richard Wright, William Attaway, James Weldon Johnson, and Zora Neale Hurston -- CHAPTER THREE: The Measures of Love: Southern Belles and Working Girls in Frances Newman, Anita Loos, and Katherine Anne Porter -- CHAPTER FOUR: Contemporary Crises of Value: White Trash, Black Paralysis, and Elite Amnesia in Dorothy Allison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy -- CHAPTER FIVE: Re-membering the Missing: Native Americans, Immigrants, and Atlanta's Murdered Children in Louis Owens, Marilou Awiakta, Lan Cao, James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, and Tayari Jones -- CONCLUSION: Disturbing the Calculation -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.