(University of North Carolina Press) The pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the region’s tumultuous racial divides, asserts Blain Roberts '96 in Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the 20th-Century South. The book examines the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry and the way that black-owned beauty shops became important sites for the civil-rights movement. Roberts is an associate professor of history at California State University, Fresno.