When Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president, the South was unmistakably the most disadvantaged part of the nation. The region's economy was the weakest, its education level the lowest, and its laws and social mores the most racially slanted. Roosevelt's New Deal effected significant changes on the cultural landscape of the South, challenging many traditions and laying the foundations for subsequent alterations in the southern way of life. In The South and the New Deal, Roger Biles examines the New Deal's impact on the rural and urban South, its black and white citizens, its poor, and its politics.