This book grew out of a June 1998 conference sponsored by the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for the Study of Southern Industrialization. With the premise that the first wave of Southern industrialization comprising mature natural-resource-based industries stumbled in the period between the two world wars, the conference focused on the “second wave” beginning in the 1940s, during which the region underwent a more diversified, more thorough, and more lasting transformation. The call for papers solicited contributions from “historians, sociologists, geographers, urban or rural studies researchers, and public policy analysts.” Individual contributions could be firm-, industry-, or locationspecific, but the conference aimed for insights into broader economic processes.