Everybody knows about community festivals that celebrate the good ol' days--events like Rattlesnake Roundup, Peanut Days, and Mule Day. Countless towns around the South stage them. They set aside one weekend a year, rope off some parking, and celebrate some local theme on the courthouse lawn or in a nearby pasture, touting lost days of imagined glory.

The phenomenon is rapidly proliferating across the region, but until now the deeper significance of these hometown events has not been explored. In Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit Rodger Brown takes the reader on a road...