Sentence:  Besides showing no inclination , apparently , to absent himself from his native region even for short periods , and in addition writing a shelf of books set in the region , he has handled in those books an astonishingly complete list of matters which have been important in the <WSD>South</WSD> during the past hundred years . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  the region of the United States lying to the south of the Mason-Dixon line