This wide-ranging collection of essays by distinguished scholars is the first collaborative work to focus exclusively on the particularity and contradictions of the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi River delta. Individual chapters deal with the French and Spanish colonial experience; the impact of the Civil War; the roles of African Americans, women, and various ethnic groups; and the changes that have occurred in towns, in social life, and in agriculture. What emerges is a rich tapestry of dichotomies that is the Delta - a land of black and white, of wealth and poverty, of progress and stasis, of despair and hope - in which all that is dear and terrible about this often overlooked region of the South is revealed.