When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson ( W.W. Norton, 238 pages, $25.95 ) The White House Looks South by William E. Leuchtenburg ( Louisiana State University Press, 668 pages, $45.00 ) White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by ( Kevin M. Kruse Princeton University Press, 325 pages, $35.00 ) The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South by Byron E. Shafer and Richard Johnston ( Harvard University Press, 240 pages, $39.95 ) Nothing has contributed more to the conservative ascendancy in American politics than the realignment of the South from solidly Democratic to reliably Republican. The South now furnishes the decisive votes for Republican control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. Outside the South, Democrats still hold the advantage in the competition on all three fronts. But the Republican dominance of the...