Lecturer Dives Into Local History in New Book on Gwinnett County

Posted July 21, 2022

In 1818 James Monroe was president, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state, and Florida was still controlled by Spain. In the 200 years since, a lot has changed. In his new book, Matthew Hild, a lecturer in the School of History and Sociology, explores a small slice of that transformation in Gwinnett County, Georgia. 

Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818-2018 is a collection of essays by 14 historians. Co-edited by Hild and Michael Gagnon, an associate professor at Georgia Gwinnett College, it's the first book to delve into Gwinnett's history and investigates topics such as slavery, the Civil War, modernization, and more.

​"While the book does in some ways tell the history of Georgia and metropolitan Atlanta on a case-study level, it also sheds light on many of the social, political, and racial tensions, as well as the economic transformations, that many Georgians and Americans are grappling with now," said Hild. "I think the book provides some context and thoughtful analysis for understanding some of those problems."

Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818-2018 was published by the University of Georgia Press in July 2022. Explore more books by our faculty.

Below images from left to right:

• Edward "Buck" Buchanan of Norcross, a rags-to-riches-to-rags again businessman who brought electrical manufacturing to Gwinnett and became one of the first automobile builders in Georgia in the early twentieth century.
• Gwinnett County native Ezzard Charles, who was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1949 to 1951.
• Alice Harrell Strickland, who became the mayor of Duluth and the first female mayor in the state of Georgia in 1922.