"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"--;American nomad -- Yeoman Olmsted: "An enthusiast by nature" -- Over the Alleghenies: gateway to the Rust Belt -- Ohio River: mutants making tow -- Kentucky: "A balance sheet of good against evil" -- To Tennessee and back: a thorough aristocrat -- Mississippi River: Steamboat blues -- Lower Mississippi: the absolute South -- New Orleans: the gumbo city -- Into the bayou: "Dat's how we roll" -- Central Louisiana: the unreconstructed South -- The Red River; heard of mudness -- Across the Sabine: "Gwine to Texas" -- Gulf Coast: oil and water -- Crockett, Texas: "The drift of things" in ruby-red America -- Austin and beyond: the Loon Star Republic -- San Antonio: high holy days at the Alamo -- German Texas: Olmsted in Arcadia -- The Hill Country: true to the Union -- Upper Guadalupe: and Absalom rode upon a mule -- To the Rio Grande: border disorder -- La Frontera: days of the dead -- Central Park ramble.