"The University of South Carolina Press’s reprinting of Phillips’s work in its Southern Classics Series is usefully timed to provide an opportunity for us to think about where we have been and where we now are on this important subject. A very insightful new introduction by Aaron W. Marrs helps guide the way. Author of Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (2009), Marrs is ideally suited to the task as his own important work builds on and revises the scholarship of Phillips and others regarding railroads and their place in southern economic life."
- Brian Shoen, H-Net