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Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea. By Paul M. Gaston. (Montgomery, Ala., and Louisville, Ky.: NewSouth Books, c. 2010. Pp. 358. $27.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-225-2.)
Historian Paul M. Gaston, author of The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking (New York, 1970), has written a memoir that includes a loving portrait of his family and kind words about his many friends, as well as an account of his education, travels, and early career. For a memoir of a historian, it offers surprisingly few insights into historiography or the ways of the profession. Gaston praises C. Vann Woodward's work and regrets not having studied with him. He nevertheless expresses his respect for, and offers interesting insights about, Fletcher M. Green, with whom he did work at the University of North Carolina. Gaston, though, is uncharacteristically dismissive of his fellow students at Chapel HUl. A few of his coUeagues at the University of Virginia, where he spent his...