John Egerton is an independent journalist and nonfiction author who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and writes broadly about his native South. Born in Atlanta in 1935 and raised in Kentucky, where he got his formal education, he has also lived in Florida, Virginia, and Texas. His books and articles seek connections between historical and contemporary Southern people, places, and events. His aim is to discover and interpret the positive and negative forces that for centuries have given this complex region its distinctiveness. Among his books are: The Americanization of Dixie (1974), Generations (1983), the landmark Southern Food (1987), which was given the Tastemaker Award (book of the year) by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and Speak Now Against the Day (1994), for which he received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He has also written and edited two books of history and visual art about his adopted home city, Nashville-one for its 200th birthday in 1979 and the other in 2001.