Edward L. Ayers has served as the president of the University of Richmond since 2007, having previously served as the Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at University of Virginia. In 2007, Ayers completed a 15th anniversary of The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. This essay appears in the collection American Places: Encounters With History, edited by William E. Leuchtenburg and published by Oxford University Press in 2002.
