categories: Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:A Memoir of the South Carolina Coast
custom_byline1: Genevieve C. Peterkin
custom_byline2: foreword by Lee G. Brockington
afterword by William P. Baldwin
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custom_author_blurb:Local historian and environmentalist Genevieve C. Peterkin (1928–2011) lived in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, for most of her life.

William P. Baldwin, a lifelong resident of the South Carolina lowcountry, is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Hard to Catch Mercy and Charles Town.

Lee G. Brockington is a senior interpreter for the Belle W. Baruch Foundation at Hobcaw Barony in Georgetown County and the author of Plantation between the Waters: A Brief History of Hobcaw Barony.
custom_reviews:"Titled after the popular spiritual, this book candidly depicts the life and times of many residents of the lowcountry through stories that sing of the joys and sorrows of everyday life."—Library Journal

"Peterkin's book is a treasure. Not quite an autobiography, not exactly a history, it is a very personal account of a special time and place and the people who made it so."—State (Columbia, S.C.)

"Heaven Is a Beautiful Place is simultaneously local and universal, intimate and expansive, funny and sad. . . . The hopeful quality of Heaven comes through distinctly, especially in Peterkin's wisdom about embracing the moment."—Charleston (S.C.) Post & Courier

"Peterkin's voice and Baldwin's editing . . . give glimpses and insights into an evolving seacoast community."—Coastal Observer

"If you read one book about South Carolina this year, make it Heaven Is a Beautiful Place."—Lexington County Chronicle
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content: Born in 1928 in the small coastal town of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Genevieve "Sister" Peterkin grew up with World War II bombing practice in her front yard, deep-sea fishing expeditions, and youthful rambles through the lowcountry. She shared her bedroom with a famous ghost and an impatient older sister. But most of all she listened. She absorbed the tales of her talented mother and her beloved friend, listened to the stories of the region's older residents, some of them former slaves, who were her friends, neighbors, and teachers.

In this new edition she once again shares with readers her insider's knowledge of the lowcountry plantations, gardens, and beaches that today draw so many visitors. Beneath the humor, hauntings, and treasures of local history, she tells another, deeper story—one that deals with the struggle for racial equality in the South, with the sometimes painful adventures of marriage and parenthood, and with inner struggles for faith and acceptance. This edition includes a new foreword by coastal writer and researcher Lee G. Brockington and a new afterword by coauthor and lowcountry novelist William P. Baldwin.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, Books, New in Paperback,
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Pages: 178
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: Michael S. Collins
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custom_author_blurb:Michael Collins is an associate professor of English at Texas A&M University. He has published essays and creative works in PMLA, Modern Philology, Michigan Quarterly Review, Callaloo, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, The Best American Poetry 2003, and elsewhere.
custom_reviews:"A superb venture in literary criticism and intellectual biography. Michael Collins brings erudition, intelligence, shrewdness, and deftness of expression to this study of a significant if little-known American poet."—Arnold Rampersad, Stanford University

"An illuminating excavation of Knight's poetry and legacy."—The Journal of African American History
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content: "Collins has written the book that Knight has long deserved."—American Literary Scholarship

Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major—but understudied—American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose. His status in the front ranks of American poets and thinkers on poetry was acknowledged in 1984, when he won the Shelley Memorial Award, which had previously gone to E.E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, and W. S. Merwin as an acknowledgement of "genius and need."

In this first book-length study of Knight and his complete body of work, Michael Collins examines the poetry of a complex literary figure who, following imprisonment, transformed his life to establish himself as a charismatic voice in American poetry and an accomplished teacher at institutions such as the University of Hartford, Lincoln University, and his own Free Peoples Poetry Workshops. Beginning with a concise biography of Knight, Collins explores Knight's volumes of poetry including Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Born of a Woman, and The Essential Etheridge Knight. Unpdated to include a new preface, Understanding Etheridge Knight brings attention to a crucial era in African American and American poetry, and to the literature of the incarcerated, while reflecting on the life and work of an original voice in American poetry.
categories: Maritime History, U.S. History, Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Sea-Facing Histories of the US South
custom_byline1: edited by Jacob Steere-Williams and Blake C. Scott
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custom_author_blurb:Jacob Steere-Williams holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and is associate professor of history at the College of Charleston.

Blake C. Scott holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin and is associate professor of international studies at College of Charleston.
custom_reviews:"This sophisticated, creatively-designed volume advances our understanding of how port cities work as profound historical repositories of violence, resistance, culture, and memory. The book will hopefully be a model for many more 'sea-facing histories' to come."—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

"An innovative and engaging collection of essays, Port Cities of the Atlantic World compels readers to rethink what they know about the port cities of the southeastern United States—especially the quintessentially southern city of Charleston—and their connections to the broader Atlantic world."—Ethan J. Kytle, coauthor of Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
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content: Traces the maritime routes and the historical networks that link port cities around the Atlantic world

Port Cities of the Atlantic World brings together a collection of essays that examine the centuries-long transatlantic transportation of people, goods, and ideas with a focus on the impact of that trade on what would become the American South. Employing a wide temporal range and broad geographic scope, the scholars contributing to this volume call for a sea-facing history of the South, one that connects that terrestrial region to this expansive maritime history. By bringing the study up to the 20th century in the collection's final section, the editors Jacob Steere-Williams and Blake C. Scott make the case for the lasting influence of these port cities—and Atlantic world history—on the economy, society, and culture of the contemporary South.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, Books, New in Paperback,
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Pages: 152
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: Jennifer Ann Ho
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custom_author_blurb:Jennifer Ann Ho, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaches courses in Asian American literature, multiethnic American literature, and contemporary American literature. She is the author of Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels and Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture and has published articles in Modern Fiction Studies, Journal for Asian American Studies, and Amerasia Journal, among others.
custom_reviews:"Jennifer Ann Ho in Understanding Gish Jen praises her progression from conventional first-person narrators in her early novels to The Love Wife's 'multiple homodiegetic first-person character narrators' who exploit the dynamism of voice and perspective. Ho is especially astute when noticing the little wrinkles of personal experience that tend to shape the author's career."—American Literary Scholarship

"Engagingly and even delightfully written, Understanding Gish Jen provides a much-needed resource for students, teachers, fans, and scholars alike. Ho's survey provides crucial insights about the context, content, and form of Jen's oeuvre. Understanding Gish Jen constitutes a major critical contribution to our understanding of this important American author; no reader of Gish Jen's work should be without this book."—Sue J. Kim, professor of English and co-director of the Center for Asian American Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell

"Capacious in its analysis and well-researched in its approach, Jennifer Ho's treatment of Gish Jen's oeuvre — inclusive of fiction and creative non-fiction — is impressive, eloquent, and unmatched. A very welcome and smart analysis of a significant American author."—Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, University of Connecticut

"In Understanding Gish Jen, Jennifer Ann Ho offers a walk through the works of one of our most important American writers. Jen is, as Ho describes her, 'a writer with an exceptional eye and ear for the comically absurd parts of contemporary life,' an American writer with her finger on the pulse of what divides us and what brings us together. Ho leaves us with the desire to read and re-read the works of this great contemporary writer, to delight in her humor, to ruminate on her wisdom."—Jeffrey F. L. Partridge, author of Beyond Literary Chinatown, winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
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content: Traces the evolution of Jen's career, her themes, and the development of her narrative voice.

Jennifer Ann Ho introduces readers to a "typical American" writer, Gish Jen, who is the author of four novels: Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife, and World and Town; a collection of short stories titled Who's Irish?; and a collection of lectures titled Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self. Jen writes with an engaging, sardonic, and imaginative voice illuminating themes common to the American experience: immigration, assimilation, individualism, the freedom to choose one's path in life, and the complicated relationships that we have with our families and our communities. A second-generation Chinese American, Jen is widely recognized as an important American literary voice, at once accessible, philosophical, and thought-provoking. In addition to her novels, she has published widely in periodicals such as the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Yale Review.

Ho traces the evolution of Jen's career, her themes, and the development of her narrative voice. In the process, she shows why Jen's observations about life in the United States - though revealed through the perspectives of her Asian American and Asian immigrant characters - resonate with a variety of audiences who find themselves reflected in Jen's accounts of love, grief, desire, disappointment, and the general domestic experiences that shape all our lives.

Following a brief biographical sketch, Ho examines each of Jen's major works, showing how she traces the transformation of immigrant dreams into mundane life, explores the limits of self-identification, and characterizes problems of cross-national communication alongside the universal problems of aging and generational conflict. Looking beyond Jen's fiction work, a final chapter examines her essays and her concerns and stature as a public intellectual, and detailed primary and secondary bibliographies provide a valuable point of departure for both teaching and future scholarship.
categories: Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration
custom_byline1: David Nicholson
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custom_author_blurb:David Nicholson is a former editor and book reviewer for the Washington Post Book World and author of Flying Home: Seven Stories of the Secret City. He attended Haverford College before graduating from the University of the District of Columbia. Nicholson has worked as a reporter in San Francisco; Milwaukee; and Dayton, Ohio. He lives in Vienna, Virginia, with his wife and son.
custom_reviews:"In this deeply satisfying book, David Nicholson tells a rigorously researched but also sensitively imagined story of one Black family's exacting and yet triumphant rendezvous with history—Southern, African American, American, and finally human history. Nicholson understands the nuances here and works with consistent mastery to draw them out for the benefit of the reader. The Garretts of Columbia is a gift for our troubled times."—Arnold Rampersad, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Stanford University, and author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography

"David Nicholson's richly sourced, interestingly populated veil of color, wherein a man's ambition and a woman's wisdom and three begotten Garrett generations will never know how or where character, luck, education, or persistence might have taken them in an equal world, may be one of the great deep reads of our time by this confessed 'weary integrationist.'"—David Levering Lewis, Professor of History, Emeritus, New York University, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

"With a quiet dignity and resolve, David Nicholson evokes in The Garretts of Columbia those of his own blood who went before him. He writes chiefly of his great-grandparents, whom he didn't know. What he knows from both his glands and his deep archival research is of their achievements—lawyer, newspaper editor and publisher, professor, teacher in segregated schools. What he knows is that old, sad, shameful story: the saga of one more multigenerational black family in America who tried so hard to love their own country, even as their own country refused to love them back. As I read, I kept thinking of the quiet dignity and resolve of those he has brought lovingly to life in this very fine book."—Paul Hendrickson, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy

"The best story is a personal story. David Nicholson tells a personal story about his family in The Garretts of Columbia. Pride, shame, and curiosity create an open, revealing book. His skilled writing takes his people from slave trade to the Great Migration. Here's a personal story that is his story - History."—Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965

"The Garretts of Columbia is a remarkably detailed, incisive, and eloquent history that reveals features of African American achievement, aspiration, and sensibility that are often overlooked. It will inform those already knowledgeable about African American history, and it will provide a wonderful introduction to those new to the field. This is a triumph of research, reflection, and imagination conveyed in beautiful, accessible, well-organized prose. Hopefully The Garretts of Columbia will garner the wide audience that it deserves."—Randall Kennedy, Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard University, and author of Say It Loud: On Race, Law, History, and Culture

"David Nicholson's deep literary dive into his family's history—against the mania of racism that haunts this nation—is poignant, powerful, and a true gift to readers."—Wil Haygood, author of Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America

"A searching family history, unfolding into a larger social history, by the noted Washington Post Book World writer and editor. Nicholson's forebears descended from enslaved people who worked the fields of South Carolina, then defied societal expectations by becoming soldiers, Civil Rights workers, lawyers, writers, and scholars. Such expectations extended into the author's own time. As a student in Washington, D.C., it was "assumed all Black kids played basketball," while a well-meaning if clueless schoolmate's mother delivered a Thanksgiving meal out of concern that the Nicholsons could not provide a feast for themselves (they could). The author is a splendid storyteller. Having grown up hearing tales of "the African," for instance, he relates what he was able to discover of a distant ancestor who "put down where he was, made the best of where he'd found himself, [and] reinvented himself as an American." He purchased freedom for himself and that of his wife and two of his children, while his other children were sold, since he couldn't afford to buy freedom for all. Nicholson gamely admits that because the facts are scarce, "not knowing who he was, I can make him who I need him to be." That ancestor provided a template for others, including a great-grandfather who was fearless and combative, "perhaps the most respected disliked man in Contemporary Negro life in South Carolina during the early years of the twentieth century." That ancestor, an "Afro-Victorian" who believed in education, ambition, and hard work, set a template of his own. Working these and other lives into a fluent and swift-moving narrative, Nicholson delivers a vivid portrait of eminent lives carried out in a society that did little to accommodate them: "They were far more faithful than the nation they loved deserved." A fascinating excursion into a past that, though relatively recent, has long been hidden from view."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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content: A multigenerational story of hope and resilience, The Garretts of Columbia is an American history of Black struggle, sacrifice, and achievement.

At the heart of David Nicholson's beautifully written and carefully researched book, The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration, are his great-grandparents, Casper George Garrett and his wife, Anna Maria. Papa, as Garrett was known to his family, was a professor at Allen University, a lawyer, and an editor of three newspapers. Dubbed Black South Carolina's "most respected disliked man," he was always ready to attack those he believed disloyal to his race. When his quixotic idealism and acerbic editorials resulted in his dismissal from Allen, his wife, who was called Mama, came into her own as the family bread winner. She was appointed supervisor of rural colored schools, trained teachers, and oversaw the construction of schoolhouses. At 51, this remarkable woman learned to drive, taking to the back roads outside Columbia to supervise classrooms, conduct literacy drives, and instruct rural farm women in the basics of home economics.

Though Papa and Mama came of age in the bleak Jim Crow years after Reconstruction, they believed in the possibility of America. Resolutely supporting their country during the First World War, they sent three of their sons to serve. One son wrote a musical with Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance. Another son became a dentist. A daughter earned a doctorate in French. And the family persevered. But, for all that Papa and Mama did to make Columbia a nurturing place, their sons and daughters joined the Great Migration, scattering north in search of the freedom the South denied them.


The Garretts embraced the hope of America and experienced the melancholy of a family separated by the search for opportunity and belonging. On the basis of decades of research and thousands of family letters—which include Mama's tart-tongued observations of friends and neighbors—The Garretts of Columbia is family history as American history, rich with pivotal events viewed through the lens of the Garretts's lives.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, Books,
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Pages: 160
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: Brenda Murphy
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custom_author_blurb:Brenda Murphy is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University and has published fifteen books, including The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in Theatre, and Twentieth-Century American Drama: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies.
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content: A new preface covers Mamet's most recent plays and nonfiction writing

Understanding David Mamet analyzes the broad range of his plays and places them in the context of his career as a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction prose, as well as drama. In addition to playwriting and directing for the theater, Mamet also writes, directs, and produces for film and television, and he writes essays, fiction, poetry, and even children's books. Author Brenda Murphy centers her discussion around Mamet's most significant plays—Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow, The Cryptogram, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Edmond, The Woods, Lakeboat, Boston Marriage, and The Duck Variations—as well as his three novels—The Village, The Old Religion, and Wilson. Murphy also notes how Mamet's one-act and less known plays provide important context for the major plays and help to give a fuller sense of the scope of his art. In her new preface, Murphy provides an overview of Mamet's plays, fiction, and essays in the 2010s and the continued move to the right in his political and cultural thinking.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, Books,
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Pages: 152
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: James A. Crank
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custom_author_blurb:James A. Crank is associate professor of American literature at the University of Alabama, a former National Humanities Center Summer Fellow, and co-host of the podcast "The Sound and the Furious." His other books include Understanding Randall Kenan, New Approaches to Gone with the Wind, and Race and New Modernisms.
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content: An ideal introduction into the complex and compelling dramas of the acclaimed playwright

Now available in a paperback edition and featuring a new preface, Understanding Sam Shepard investigates the notoriously complex dramatic world of one of America's most prolific, thoughtful, and challenging contemporary playwrights. During his nearly fifty-year career as a writer, actor, director, and producer, Shepard (1943-2017) consistently focused his work on the ever-changing American cultural landscape. James A. Crank's thorough study offers scholars and students of the dramatist a means of understanding Shephard's frequent experimentation with language, setting, character, and theme. The new preface examines Shepard's legacy and his final work of fiction, Spy of the First Person.
categories: Southern History, Business & Economics, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Jewish Studies,
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Pages: 280
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custom_subtitle:How Jewish Entrepreneurs Built Economy and Community in Upcountry South Carolina
custom_byline1: Diane Catherine Vecchio
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custom_author_blurb:Diane Catherine Vecchio is professor emerita of history, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. She is author of Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America. She is also a contributor to Recovering the Piedmont Past (Vols. 1 and 2), Doing Business in America, and Southern Jewish History, as well as the author of many articles on Italian and Jewish immigrants.
custom_reviews:"With impeccable scholarship, Vecchio delivers a concise history of this understudied and important Jewish community. She explores the essential role of education and family networks and demonstrates the entrepreneurial success of immigrants and the various strategies 'strangers' in the South used to succeed in an unfamiliar environment. This is a brilliant account of a critical subject essential to understanding the immigrant experience and the American South."—Orville Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Professor of History, Clemson University, and Emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University of Illinois
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content: A new perspective on Jewish history in the South

Diane Catherine Vecchio examines the diverse economic experiences of Jews who settled in Upcountry (now called Upstate) South Carolina. Like other parts of the so-called New South, the Upcountry was a center of textile manufacturing and new business opportunities that drew entrepreneurial energy to the region. Working with a rich set of oral histories, memoirs, and traditional historical documents, Vecchio provides an important corrective to the history of manufacturing in South Carolina. She explores Jewish community development and describes how Jewish business leaders also became civic leaders and affected social, political, and cultural life. The Jewish community's impact on all facets of life across the Upcountry is vital to understanding the growth of today's Spartanburg-Greenville corridor.
categories: Southern History, Civil War, paperback, ebook, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, Jewish Studies,
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Pages: 278
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custom_subtitle:A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War
custom_byline1: Jason K. Friedman
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custom_author_blurb:Jason K. Friedman is author of the story collection Fire Year, which won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and the Anne and Robert Cowan Writers Award. He lives in San Francisco.
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content: Purchasing a historic Savannah home unlocks the sweeping story of a Southern Jewish family

As Jason K. Friedman renovated his flat in a grand 1875 town house in his hometown of Savannah, he discovered a portal to the past. Liberty Street takes the reader on Friedman's personal journey to understand the history of the family who built the home. At the center of the story is a sensitive young man pulled between love and duty, a close-knit family straining under moral and political conflicts, and a city coming into its own.

The Cohens, part of a Sephardic community in London, arrived in South Carolina (ca. 1750), seeking economic opportunity and personal freedoms. Becoming founding members of the Charleston Jewish community,they built home and community in the American South and rose from shopkeepers to success in business, politics, and high society in Savannah, one of the principal cities of the Confederacy. At the height of their success, the Cohens met tragedy, when their twenty-year-old golden boy, Gratz, was killed in battle wearing Rebel Grey, just weeks before the end of the Civil War.

Friedman draws on letters, diaries, and his experiences traveling from Georgia to Virginia to uncover these hidden histories and explore the ways place and collective memory haunt the present. At a moment when the hard light of truth shines on gauzy lost-cause myths, Liberty Street is a timely work of historical sleuthing.
categories: Civil War, U.S. History, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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Pages: 278
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custom_subtitle:From Shared Vision to Irreconcilable Conflict
custom_byline1: William F. Hartford
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custom_author_blurb:William F. Hartford is an independent scholar whose earlier works include Money, Morals, and Politics: Massachusetts in the Age of the Boston Associates and Where Is Our Responsibility: Unions and Economic Change in the New England Textile Industry, 1870-1960.
custom_reviews:"Adams and Calhoun tells an impressive story, one that has never been told before in this manner, with remarkable clarity, vigor, and fairness. William F. Hartford has produced a fast-paced, engaging narrative about two famous men that proves not only fair to both and engaging for readers but also one not sparing concern for the flaws both men manifested."—Lacy Ford, emeritus, department of history, University of South Carolina

"William F. Hartford's decision to structure his study of Calhoun and Adams as a dual biography is superb. The two men were so similar in some ways, and so dissimilar in others, that they make a perfect pairing to show how the issue of slavery became the rock on which the entire country had nearly shattered by the end of their lives."—Robert Elder, associate professor of history, Baylor University

"A notable book – Based on thorough research in primary and secondary sources, William Hartford's insightful treatment of both Adams and Calhoun illustrates the powerful personal and political motives that led two extraordinarily able and ambitious American leaders from alliance to opposition, a course that exemplified the nation's. I heartily recommend Professor Hartford's achievement."—William J. Cooper, Boyd Professor Emeritus, LSU
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content: Examines the evolving lives of two men who were crucial political figures in the consequential decades prior to the Civil War

Although neither of them lived to see the Civil War, John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun did as much any two political figures of the era to shape the intersectional tensions that produced the conflict. William F. Hartford examines the lives of Adams and Calhoun as a prism through which to view the developing sectional conflict. While both men came of age as strong nationalists, their views, like those of the nation, diverged by the 1830s, largely over the issue of slavery. Hartford examines the two men's responses to issues of nationalism and empire, sectionalism and nullification, slavery and antislavery, party and politics, and also the expansion of slavery. He offers fresh insights into the sectional conflict that also accounts for the role of personal idiosyncrasy and interpersonal relationships in the coming of the Civil War.
categories: Cultural Studies & Sociology, U.S. History, paperback, ebook, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, Native American Studies,
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Pages: 216
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custom_byline1: edited by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough
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custom_author_blurb:Sandra Slater is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston.

Fay A. Yarbrough is professor of history at Rice University and the author of Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century.
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content: Groundbreaking historical scholarship on the complex attitudes toward gender and sexual roles in Native American culture, with a new preface and supplemental bibliography

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the New World, Native Americans across the continent had developed richly complex attitudes and forms of expression concerning gender and sexual roles. The role of the "berdache," a man living as a woman or a woman living as a man in native societies, has received recent scholarly attention but represents just one of many such occurrences of alternative gender identification in these cultures. Editors Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough have brought together scholars who explore the historical implications of these variations in the meanings of gender, sexuality, and marriage among indigenous communities in North America. Essays that span from the colonial period through the nineteenth century illustrate how these aspects of Native American life were altered through interactions with Europeans.

Organized chronologically, Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850 probes gender identification, labor roles, and political authority within Native American societies. The essays are linked by overarching examinations of how Europeans manipulated native ideas about gender for their own ends and how indigenous people responded to European attempts to impose gendered cultural practices at odds with established traditions. Many of the essays also address how indigenous people made meaning of gender and how these meanings developed over time within their own communities. Several contributors also consider sexual practice as a mode of cultural articulation, as well as a vehicle for the expression of gender roles.

Representing groundbreaking scholarship in the field of Native American studies, these insightful discussions of gender, sexuality, and identity advance our understanding of cultural traditions and clashes that continue to resonate in native communities today as well as in the larger societies those communities exist within.
categories: African American Studies, paperback, ebook, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_byline1: W. J. Megginson
custom_byline2: foreword by Orville Vernon Burton
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custom_author_blurb:W. J. Megginson (1943–2020) was a native of Upstate South Carolina. He received his PhD from George Washington University and taught at Arkansas State University, Hendrix College in Arkansas, Drexel University, and La Salle University.
custom_reviews:"By focusing on three counties in the northwest corner of South Carolina, W. J. Megginson illuminates how African Americans interacted with whites and at the same time struggled to sustain their own community. Relying on a broad range of contemporary and statistical evidence, the author offers a new perspective concerning the complex nature of race relations over more than a century in an area where the Black population remained in a minority."—Loren Schweninger, Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor emeritus, University of North Carolina Greensboro

"This remarkable and totally engrossing piece of scholarship—among the very best works ever published about African American life in the South—stands as a model of local history and research writing. Every page casts new and revealing light on such subjects as race relations and Black religion, education, and social life in the South during the period."—Allen B. Ballard, professor of history and Africana studies emeritus, State University of New York-Albany
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content: A rich portrait of Black life in South Carolina's Upstate

Encyclopedic in scope, yet intimate in detail, African American Life in South Carolina's Upper Piedmont, 1780-1900, delves into the richness of community life in a setting where Black residents were relatively few, notably disadvantaged, but remarkably cohesive. W. J. Megginson shifts the conventional study of African Americans in South Carolina from the much-examined Lowcountry to a part of the state that offered a quite different existence for people of color. In Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens counties—occupying the state's northwest corner—he finds an independent, brave, and stable subculture that persevered for more than a century in the face of political and economic inequities. Drawing on little-used state and county denominational records, privately held research materials, and sources available only in local repositories, Megginson brings to life African American society before, during, and after the Civil War. Orville Vernon Burton, Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University and University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar Emeritus at the University of Illinois, provides a new foreword.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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custom_byline1: Ian Tan
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custom_author_blurb:Ian Tan is assistant professor of English, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger: Poetry as Appropriative Proximity.
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content: The most up-to-date and unified study of critically acclaimed and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver.

In Understanding Barbara Kingsolver, Ian Tan situates Kingsolver's oeuvre in an ecocritical and ecofeminist context and argues that her work puts forward an ethics of difference that informs a more egalitarian vision of the world. Following a brief biography, Tan explores ecocriticism as a literary strategy and analyzes Kingsolver's early nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, as an entry point to her thematic interests. Subsequent chapters attend to Kingsolver's nine novels, including her breakout The Poisonwood Bible and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead, and the ways they engage with some of the most important issues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including postcolonialism and climate change. This book shows how Kingsolver gives her readers the aesthetic tools to begin to see the familiar and the ordinary in a different light, allowing idealism to enrich our everyday lives.
categories: paperback, ebook, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Historic Preservation,
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Pages: 208
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custom_byline1: Judith T. Bainbridge
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custom_author_blurb:Judith T. Bainbridge is professor emerita of English at Furman University. She has written six books about the history of Greenville. From 1999 through 2001 she wrote a biweekly column about Greenville history for the Greenville News.
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content: A concise and engaging history that traces Greenville's development from frontier settlement to one of America's best small cities

Today, Greenville, South Carolina, is regularly included on lists of the best cities and best places to live in the United States. The present-day site of technological innovation nestled in the Piedmont of America's Southeast, Greenville is promoted as a future-oriented city and a weekend getaway for tourists interested in art, culture, nature, and cuisine.

In this lively historical account illustrated with over 60 images, author Judith T. Bainbridge invites readers to explore the full expanse of Greenville's history, from its earliest days as Cherokee hunting grounds, to its development as a frontier settlement, and later a nineteenth-century summer resort; from the economic boom brought by the textile industry, to the bust of the Great Depression, and finally to the revitalization of the downtown as a haven for business and tourism in the twenty-first century. Key leaders and colorful figures populate the story and help bring Greenville's history to life. Vardry McBee, the "father of Greenville"; James C. Furman, namesake of Furman University; baseball legend "Shoeless" Joe Jackson; activist Viola Neblett; and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, among many others, called Greenville home, and all helped to shape the once quiet village into the leading city that it has become today. Readers will discover the historical roots of Greenville's remarkable development and how the past continues to shape not only its present but also guides its future.
categories: Southern History, paperback, ebook, Forthcoming, Books, Travelogue & Essays,
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Pages: 384
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custom_subtitle:The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road
custom_byline1: Pete Candler
custom_byline2: foreword by Rosanne Cash
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custom_author_blurb:Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Pete Candler is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Bitter Southerner, Washington Post, and elsewhere. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
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content: The author's road trips through the American South lead to a personal confrontation with history

In A Deeper South: The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road, Pete Candler offers a travel narrative drawn from twenty-five years of road-tripping through the backroads of the American South. Featuring Candler's own photography, the book taps into the public imagination and the process of both remembering and forgetting that define our collective memory of place. In this highly personal investigation of the impact of white supremacy and the regime of silence on his own family, Candler reflects on the underexplored South in his attempt to confront Southern memory and nostalgia. In the process, he realizes that he is more connected to those histories than he ever imagined.

With the wit of a Southern storyteller and the eye of a photographer, Candler takes the reader on a journey that spans two continents, six states, and countless miles of asphalt. Along the way, we meet the "galaxy's no. 1 Elvis fan," stop to ponder roadside markers and small-town monuments, and contemplate what makes the South both distinct from, and emblematic of, the nation of which it is a part. The stories that he uncovers can only be found off the beaten path, away from the curated tourist experiences and mass culture located near the interstate exit ramp. A Deeper South is about Candler's journeys to see the South and understand it, and he invites us to ride along.
categories: Outdoors & Nature, Memoir & Biography, Gift Ideas, paperback, ebook, New & Noteworthy, Books, Travelogue & Essays,
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custom_subtitle:And Other Stories Afield with Fine Friends, Fair Dogs, a Shotgun, and a Fly Rod
custom_byline1: Jim Mize
custom_byline2: foreword by Jim Casada
drawings by Bob White
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custom_author_blurb:Jim Mize writes from his cabin in the South Carolina mountains while his Lab, Moose, keeps the bears at bay. His previous books include The Winter of our Discount Tent, A Creek Trickles Through It, Hunting with Beanpole, and Fishing with Beanpole. His articles have appeared in Gray's Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, South Carolina Wildlife, In-Fisherman, Great Days Outdoors, and other magazines.
custom_reviews:"In his ability to capture the elusive essence of sport, [Mize] serves as a voice for all of us. That's a rare gift and is precisely what makes The Jon Boat Years a treasure that should be read and enjoyed not just now but for generations to come."—Jim Casada, from the foreword

"Jim Mize knows the outdoors, from jon boats and fly rods to dove fields and pointing dogs—that is why his stories ring true. The tales recounted in The Jon Boat Years transcend time and ensure Jim a spot in the revered history of outdoor literature."—Joey Frazier, editor, South Carolina Wildlife

"Jim Mize has made his mark as a humor writer, but this book shows him to be one of our finest outdoor writers of any kind. He combines spot-on descriptions with searing insights into the human heart, and he is as adept at recalling a month of youthful freedom out West, as he is showing us how to pass along love and advice to a grandchild....This is a book I'll treasure and revisit often."—Rob Simbeck, author of The Southern Wildlife Watcher

"The Jon Boat Years possesses a healthy measure of Mize's usual wit, but the unforgettable stories in this collection will tug at your heartstrings as much as they tickle your funny bone. Tag along with Mize as he ventures through fields, forests, and streams, hunting and fishing with family and friends, and you're sure to agree he deserves recognition as one of our truly great outdoor writers."—Keith "Catfish" Sutton, writer, CatfishNow
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content: Delightful tales of hunting and fishing, family, friends, dogs, and precious time well spent.

Nationally recognized and award-winning writer Jim Mize captures the true essence of sport and living life to the fullest in this collection of stories about his outdoor escapades. In tales spanning more than five decades, Mize invites readers into carefree days hiking through the Colorado Rockies with a fly rod and leisurely casting poppers to bluegill on small southern ponds. Mize's humorous stories entertain and return readers to their own turkey hunting or creek-fishing excursions. Black-and-white drawings from artist Bob White illustrate stories filled with laughter, quiet contemplation, and wonder.
categories: Literary Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974
custom_byline1: Dianne C. Luce
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custom_author_blurb:Dianne C. Luce is the author of Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period (University of South Carolina Press) and coeditor of Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy and A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy. She is cofounder and past president of the Cormac McCarthy Society.
custom_reviews:"In Embracing Vocation, Dianne C. Luce offers a vivid account of McCarthy's early writing life, one that is rich in archival detail and incomparable in its depth and scope. The volume constitutes the essential basis for any future biography, and it will form an interpretive foundation for a generation of McCarthy scholars and beyond."—Steven Frye, professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, and author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy and Unguessed Kingships

"Dianne Luce is the rare literary scholar whose scrupulous research would pass courtroom standards of evidence. Through forensic analysis of drafts and correspondence, the meticulous assemblage of widely dispersed interview clues and financial records, and the invaluable archival record of her own making, Luce has achieved what lesser minds and scholars once deemed impossible: a credible and creditable account of the reputationally elusive writer's first phase of literary life. Her ability to elicit order from the record, one carefully sourced fact at a time, is astonishing. If McCarthy is a writer for the ages, then Luce's book will stand as a foundational gift to literary historians and devotees alike."—Bryan Giemza, author of Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy's Expanding World

"Dianne Luce continues to demonstrate her preeminence among Cormac McCarthy scholars. Rigorously excavating correspondence, drafts, notes and other documents from the Wittliff Collection and other archives, she provides a thorough, illuminating, and indispensable examination of the genesis of McCarthy's first three novels and the origins of his career."—Dr. Scott D Yarbrough, co-editor of Carrying the Fire: Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the Apocalyptic Tradition and host of the podcast Reading McCarthy

"In this intricately researched story of Cormac McCarthy's early novels and his work as a writer, Dianne Luce paints a fascinating portrait of the author, his creative process, and the sometimes surprising ways that his life and art come together. Luce's scholarship is, as always, unparalleled."—Stacey Peebles, editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal
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content: Revelations on craft from a foundational scholar of Cormac McCarthy

Devotees of Cormac McCarthy's novels are legion, and deservedly so. Embracing Vocation, which tells the tale of his journey to become one of America's greatest living writers, will be invaluable to scholars and literary critics—and to the many fans—interested in his work.

Dianne C. Luce, a foundational scholar of McCarthy's writing, through extensive archival research, examines the first fifteen years of his career and his earliest novels. Novel by novel, Luce traces each book's evolution. In the process she unveils McCarthy's working processes as well as his personal, literary, and professional influences, highlighting his ferocious devotion to both his craft and burgeoning art. Luce invites us to see the fascinating evolution of an American author with a unique vision all his own. Until there is a full-on biography, this study, along with Luce's previous, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period, is the finest available portrait of an American genius unfolding.
categories: Southern History, Political Science, Cultural Studies & Sociology, Memoir & Biography, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Ralph Northam, Black Resolve, and a Racial Reckoning in Virginia
custom_byline1: Margaret Edds
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custom_author_blurb:Margaret Edds is a former reporter and editorial writer for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. She is the author of several books, including We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow; Finding Sara: A Daughter's Journey; and An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington Jr.
custom_reviews:"[The] book . . . offers new details about the 2019 scandal and the former governor's remarkable political survival."—The Associated Press

"Margaret Edds delivers a deeply reported, inside look at how Gov. Ralph Northam weathered a potentially crippling scandal and ultimately helped establish Virginia as a vanguard of social and racial equity policy. She contextualizes it with a compelling examination of Virginia's racial history and the impact on its politics. Having extensively covered Northam's journey, I consider it a rare story of resolve, resilience, and redemption. Edds brilliantly captures it all."—Geoff Bennett, Chief Washington Correspondent for PBS NewsHour

"Margaret Edds, a longtime journalist and talented author, addresses the volatile mix of race and politics that boiled over in Virginia when the sitting governor was revealed to have used blackface decades earlier. Edds movingly chronicles the swift fall and then the remarkable redemption of this embattled governor, whose scandal unexpectedly became the start of historic progress in race relations."—Larry Sabato, director, UVA Center for Politics, and editor, Sabato's Crystal Ball

"Margaret Edds has pulled back the curtain to allow entry into the public and private moments endured by a politician grappling with race as he undergoes and creates transformative change. On February 1, 2019, a repulsive photo featured on Gov. Ralph Northam's medical school yearbook page became widely known and circulated. By June 4, 2020, Northam had come to understand why they announced that the Robert E. Lee statue must and would be removed from the storied Monument Avenue. The space in between is carefully chronicled by Edds, who brings the reader into the drama; introduces us to staff, friends, and family; and encourages us to feel the swirl of emotions and actions. Her engaging writing style and dedication to details makes this a book to sink into and challenges us to think about our own and our society's blind spots around race."—Lauranett L. Lee, public historian and visiting lecturer, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

"This book is no ordinary biography of Ralph Northam—it illustrates a man and a commonwealth, facing down history. The story transcends the now-infamous blackface controversy. Edds masterfully describes how the events of 2019 relate to America's tortured racial history, the politicization of that history, and one man's attempt to redeem himself—and his state—from the perils the past."—Julian Hayter, author of The Dream Is Lost: Voting Rights and the Politics of Race in Richmond, Virginia, and associate professor of leadership studies, University of Richmond

"What The Eyes Can't See by Margaret Edds, a veteran Virginia journalist, would make a good book club book. The impetus for Edds' book was Northam's infamous blackface scandal that nearly drove him from office, then led him to reconfigure his term around racial equity issues. Her book is fascinating for the behind-the-scenes account of how the scandal unfolded and then what happened for the rest of Northam's term. Even if you disagree with everything Northam did, those are still useful insights for how politics and government really work (spoiler alert: not often well). The real value of the book is in the last five words of the subtitle: "a racial reckoning in Virginia." . . . What you'll find is not on the preachy side, but the policy side – a look at some of the difficulties that Black Virginians face that many white Virginians simply don't think about because they don't have to. Edds' book offers up a lot to talk about, no matter how you feel about Northam personally."—Dwayne Yancey, Cardinal News
custom_awards:Winner of the 2023 Virginia Literary Award in Nonfiction, awarded by the Library of Virginia
content: Winner of the 2023 Virginia Literary Award in Nonfiction, awarded by the Library of Virginia

The transformation of Governor Ralph Northam

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's "blackface scandal" could have destroyed any politician. The photo of Governor Northam purportedly in blackface created a firestorm not only locally but also in every political sphere. What the Eyes Can't See details why Northam's career did not end with the scandal, and how it made him a better governor—and a better citizen.

In this book Margaret Edds draws on unprecedented access to the governor, his aides, and members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, whose initial anger evolved into determination to mine good from an ugly episode. Both scolding and encouraging, they led Northam to a deeper understanding of the racism and pain the photograph symbolized. To Northam's credit, he listened, and more importantly learned the lessons of endemic, systemic racism and applied those lessons to his legislative agenda. Edds provides a revealing examination of race in the nation, how racism might be addressed and reckoned with, and how we all may find a measure of redemption in listening to one another.
categories: Civil Rights, Memoir & Biography, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Lewis Pitts and the Struggle for Democracy, Equality, and Justice
custom_byline1: Jason Langberg
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custom_author_blurb:Jason Langberg is an education, justice, and civil rights lawyer in Colorado.
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content: Be inspired by this grassroots civil rights lawyer's quest for equity and justice

Born in 1947 and raised in rural South Carolina, Lewis Pitts grew up oblivious to the civil rights revolution underway across his native state and throughout the country. A directionless, white college student, in 1968 Pitts committed to military service and was destined for Vietnam. Five years later—after a formative period in which he underwent an intellectual and moral awakening, was discharged as a conscientious objector, and graduated from law school—he embarked on an unlikely forty-year career as a crusading social justice attorney.

The Life of a Movement Lawyer: Lewis Pitts and the Struggle for Democracy, Equality, and Justice chronicles how Pitts positively affected thousands of lives working in civil rights movements for social change.

Beyond documenting a life well-lived and shedding light on lesser-known activists and movements, Jason Langberg in this thoroughly researched biography explores issues that continue to threaten American democracy: poverty; climate change; police brutality; voter suppression; and corporate power. Pitts' life will energize, inspire, and compel action in those who seek to continue the pursuit of increased justice for all.
categories: Political Science, Rhetoric & Communication, Studies in Rhetoric & Communication, paperback, ebook, Books,
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custom_subtitle:The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres
custom_byline1: Gerard A. Hauser
custom_byline2: new foreword by Phaedra C. Pezzullo
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custom_author_blurb:Gerard A. Hauser is professor emeritus of communication and Arts & Sciences Professor Emeritus of Distinction in Rhetoric at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of Introduction to Rhetorical Theory and editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric in Dialogue: Redrawing Their Intellectual Landscape. He also edits the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric.
custom_reviews:"This diverting, timely study of what it means to have a voice in civil society and how it is achieved offers new conceptions of complex public spheres. . . This title would be apt to use as a textbook, given its wisdom, orderly and clear presentation, and interdisciplinary approach."—Choice Reviews

"And insisting upon seeing vernacular exchanges as important forms of political discourse is part and parcel of Hauser's very useful project of shifting attention away from a non-existent public sphere to the real publics in which people spend much of their lives. That project is useful for a variety of reasons, but one of the most striking is that it provides a much more hopeful view of political discourse in democracy."—Rhetoric Society Quarterly

"Gerard Hauser's Vernacular Voices is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking theoretical discussion of public opinion and the public sphere. Hauser rightly disputes the 'authority' we grant to opinion polls, and he aspires to develop a 'rhetorical' alternative for discovering and communicating public opinion."—Argumentation and Advocacy
custom_awards:Winner of the 1999 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Prize, Public Address Division of the National Communication Association
content: An award-winning study of how formal and informal public discourse shapes opinions

A foundational text of twenty-first-century rhetorical studies, Vernacular Voices addresses the role of citizen voices in steering a democracy through an examination of the rhetoric of publics. Gerard A. Hauser maintains that the interaction between everyday and official discourse discloses how active members of a complex society discover and clarify their shared interests and engage in exchanges that shape their opinions on issues of common interest.

In the two decades since Vernacular Voices was first published, much has changed: in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, US presidents have increasingly taken unilateral power to act; the internet and new media have blossomed; and globalization has raised challenges to the autonomy of nation states. In a new preface, Hauser shows how, in an era of shared, global crises, we understand publics, how public spheres form and function, and the possibilities for vernacular expressions of public opinion lie at the core of lived democracy.

A foreword is provided by Phaedra C. Pezzullo, associate professor of communication at the University of Colorado Boulder.
categories: Memoir & Biography, Gift Ideas, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:A Cook's Journal
custom_byline1: John Martin Taylor
custom_byline2: foreword by Jessica B. Harris
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custom_author_blurb:John Martin Taylor is a culinary historian and cookbook author. His first book, Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking, has been continuously in print for thirty years, and his writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Gastronomica.
custom_reviews:"After flipping through a few pages, you will see why John Martin Taylor is one of my biggest heroes. His contribution to Southern food is unmatched. Keep flipping through these pages and you'll see why."—Sean Brock, author of cookbooks Heritage and SOUTH, and featured chef on the Netflix Chef's Table series

"John Martin Taylor embodies himself in landscapes and absorbs water, air, earth and spirit. This project, bridging his journeys southeast of America and Asia, with stops in Italy, Romania, China, and the Caribbean in between exposes a culinary dialogue of an artist with his art we are privileged to be a part of. This collection is magical."—Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene and Koshersoul

"I had the good fortune to meet the inimitable John Martin Taylor at his Charleston bookshop years ago while I was a young newspaper food writer full of questions and his grand epicurean journey had already begun. This Lowcountry man who was born in Louisiana has been on the move all his life, and now, finally, we can find out where he's been. And meet his grandmother who showed him how to dry green summer apples on a window screen and learn the secret to his mother-in-law's chocolate chip cookies. And see how to make pesto like they do in Genoa and understand why he doesn't want to make wedding cake anymore, no matter how good of friends you are. (It has something to do with summer heat, a broken air conditioner, and vodka.) This bright, witty, globe-trotting epicure has just shared it all, and we better pull up a chair and listen."—Anne Byrn, author of American Cake, The Cake Mix Doctor, and Between the Layers newsletter on Substack

"John Taylor is what I would call a natural cook. We go back almost 50 years, and I've never known him to cook without dancing at the same time! Our band—The B52s—used to go over to his little house in Athens, Ga. On a hot summer afternoon where he could always be found playing music and making cornbread, we'd all dance around the table and wait for the gold to come out of the oven! [Charleston to Phnom]—rich in recipes, culinary history, travel, and general joie de vivre—will have you dancing around the kitchen table hungry for more!"—Kate Pierson, longtime friend of "JT," founding member of The B-52s

"John Martin Taylor, or "Hoppin' John," has done it again. His laser-like vision brings to life decades of insightful and scholarly work encompassing his vast knowledge of culinary history and classic European cooking. His Southern voice enchants us with vivid memories from long ago — dancing the Shag; preparing minestrone outside Genoa; and to-the-minute details of Lowcountry shrimp and grits. In Charleston to Phnom Penh: A Cook's Journal, he shares the lifetime of a man who has enjoyed life to the fullest. His brilliance edits out the mediocre, focusing instead on the beauty of a dish like Peaches Aswim in Rose Petals, 2008, a recipe from the sister-in-law of my mentor Richard Olney. John, like Richard, is an artist who, in lieu of painting, makes his mark with some of the greatest food writing and editing from the 20th century."—Frank Stitt, chef and owner of Highlands Bar and Grill, Bottega, and Chez Fonfon

"How lucky we are to have John Martin Taylor's collected works! These essays are filled with exuberance, wit, and erudition, at turns poignant and funny. Charleston to Phnom Penh captures a life rich in food, friendship, and art. Equal parts scholarship, memoir, travelogue, culinary companion, and language lesson, this is truly a book to savor."—Darra Goldstein, food historian and founding editor of Gastronomica

"A legendary writer and cook, John M. Taylor is one of the finest culinary and historical treasures of his generation. Two of my first cookbooks, The New Southern Cook and Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking, are still some of my favorites and quite worn with use. Anyone can cook Southern if they follow along with this master of the craft!"—Tank Jackson, hog farmer and owner of Holy City Hogs

"I have known John Taylor since we met in Paris 40 years ago. His friendship was the key to an amazingly rich new world. Not only is he a wonderful cook, someone who cooks with his soul, with all his life history, but he's a passionate scholar of everything we ingest. This truly marvelous book encapsulates all this and more. It's a declaration of love to life."—Jean-Sébastien Stehli, associate managing editor of Madame Figaro

"What a pleasure, what a treasure—John Taylor's culinary musings all pulled together in one fascinating volume. I especially loved the beginning chapters with such hauntingly delicious memories of his early years, in the South and many other parts of the world. In a word: Delightful!"—Nancy Jenkins, food historian and journalist, author of Virgin Territory

"You are about to make a friend. Meet John Martin Taylor, also known as Hoppin' John, also known as Bubba to a very select few among whom I number myself. In these pages he invites you to sit with him for a while. If you do, I can guarantee that he will dazzle you with his erudition, astonish you with knowledge garnered in his travels, and delight you with his sense of humor that will have you at times laughing out loud. . . . The tales that are told are an exuberant love letter to a life well lived: a life that is savored daily—one seasoned with thought, simmered with humor, and served up with JOY."—From the foreword by Jessica B. Harris, PhD, culinary historian, and author of High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America
custom_awards:Winner of the 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Award, Food Writing, Cambodia/USA
content: Winner of the 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Award, Food Writing, Cambodia/USA

A journey through the lands of boiled peanuts, pesto, and pickled peppercorns—with thirty recipes

Foodies, travel enthusiasts, culinary historians, fans of fine writing, and cookbook collectors will feast on John Martin Taylor's Charleston to Phnom Penh. A unique vision of a joyous and peripatetic life, these essays take readers on a journey across three continents, from the South Carolina Lowcountry of Taylor's upbringing to the Caribbean, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

Taylor recalls his mother's before-her-time culinary experiments; probes historical archives to research the origins of classic dishes; and remembers adventures sailing, dancing, and fishing, as well as cooking. His gaze is social, etymological, personal, comic, and historical, and all foods are considered fair game for scrutiny. Taylor tells us how to bake with olive oil, why he doesn't make wedding cakes, what to do in Transylvania, and how he came to be a voice of the Lowcountry. Make a margarita and delve into his deconstruction of hoppin' john, his erstwhile namesake; the history of cheese straws; and how to make callaloo and fish amok.
categories: Rhetoric & Communication, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Why Social Media Is Making Us Angry
custom_byline1: Jeff Rice
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custom_author_blurb:Jeff Rice is professor and Martha B. Reynolds Chair in Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies at University of Kentucky.
custom_reviews:"Shakespeare may have acknowledged the 'winter of our discontent,' yet Jeff Rice writes about an ongoing era of discontent that permeates our global psyche, building a case for outrage as the predominant digital response that is both medium and technology. The extent to which Rice succeeds in exhaustively documenting how pervasively anger circulates affectively, algorithmically, and rhetorically may itself enrage, but will never disappoint, given Rice's continued stature and skill as digital rhetoric's foremost social theorist."—Kristine L. Blair, dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, Duquesne University
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content: An accessible and important look at what is truly behind our digital outrage

On any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media is Making Us Angry Jeff Rice addresses the critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across social media platforms, and sheds new light on how our anger isn't merely a reaction against singular events, but generated out of aggregated beliefs and ideas. Captivating, accessible, and exceedingly important, The Rhetoric of Outrage encourages readers to have the difficult conversations about what is truly behind their anger.
categories: Southern History, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Native American Studies,
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Pages: 196
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custom_subtitle:Stuarts Town and the Struggle for Survival in Early South Carolina
custom_byline1: Peter N. Moore
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custom_author_blurb:Peter N. Moore is professor of history, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, and the author of World of Toil and Strife: Community Change in Backcountry South Carolina, 1750–1805 and Archibald Simpson's Unpeaceable Kingdom: The Ordeal of Evangelicalism in the Colonial South.
custom_reviews:"An engagingly written book on a neglected subject: the nearly simultaneous settlement of the Port Royal region by first the Yamasees and then Scots. The author makes a big argument: that it was the partnering of the Yamasees and Scots in the 1685 assault on the Timucua town of Afuica that reignited the commercial enslavement of Indians out of South Carolina . . . Although other scholars discuss these events, [Moore's] book is the first to focus squarely on this subject."—Denise I. Bossy, associate professor, University of North Florida

"[This] is a compelling tale, rich in detail and skillfully narrated [] a fascinating account that should see much use in college classrooms."—North Carolina Historical Review
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content: An examination of the dual Scottish-Yamasee colonization of Port Royal

Those interested in the early colonial history of South Carolina and the southeastern borderlands will find much to discover in Carolina's Lost Colony in which historian Peter N. Moore examines the dual colonization of Port Royal at the end of the seventeenth century. From the east came Scottish Covenanters, who established the small outpost of Stuarts Town. Meanwhile, the Yamasee arrived from the south and west. These European and Indigenous colonizers made common cause as they sought to rival the English settlement of Charles Town to the north and the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to the south. Also present were smaller Indigenous communities that had long populated the Atlantic sea islands. It is a global story whose particulars played out along a small piece of the Carolina coast.

Religious idealism and commercial realities came to a head as the Scottish settlers made informal alliances with the Yamasee and helped to reinvigorate the Indian slave trade—setting in motion a series of events that transformed the region into a powder keg of colonial ambitions, unleashing a chain of hostilities, realignments, displacement, and destruction that forever altered the region.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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Pages: 170
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custom_byline1: Michael Antonucci
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custom_author_blurb:Michael Antonucci is professor emeritus at Keene State College where he taught courses on Black literature and culture in the American Studies program and English department. His scholarship has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Obsidian, as well as other journals and publications.
custom_reviews:"Michael Antonucci's sustained engagement with Michael Harper's extensive oeuvre has paid off in this richly textured and highly illuminating study of one of the major American poets of the late twentieth century. Antonucci deftly navigates Harper's vast canon and epigrammatic approach to poetic language with dexterity and aplomb. In coining the terms 'generative kinship' and 'convergent history,' he expertly traverses the multiple landscapes and diverse populations in Harper's aesthetic universe, and he skillfully deploys them as an analytic to unfold and explicate Harper's superb mastery of American and African American formal poetics and oral traditions while showcasing Harper's love of the sounds and rhythms of African American music and musical vocality. A gift for readers at all levels, Antonucci's compelling reading of Harper provides the necessary resources for accessing the complexity and for understanding the magnitude of Harper's poetic vision and cultural underpinnings."—Thadious M. Davis, author of Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Religion, and Literature

"Michael Antonucci truly 'Understands' how Michael S. Harper sings a self intensely replete with 'poetic multivocality.' This excellent discussion draws on other scholars' work while building its own arresting, informative contribution. These close readings of Harper present how he imagined and sought 'A Love Supreme.' Antonucci indeed 'Understands' Michael S. Harper!"—Robert B. Stepto, Professor Emeritus, Yale University, and coeditor of Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship, with Michael S. Harper
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content: A fresh examination of Harper's body of work as an archive of Black life, thought, and culture

The first book devoted to the groundbreaking poet's work, Understanding Michael S. Harper locates Harper's poetic project within Black expressive tradition. The study examines poems drawn from the eleven volumes of verse that Harper (1938-2016) produced between 1970 and 2010, bringing attention to his poetry's sustained engagement with music, literature, and the visual arts. Author Michael Antonucci offers readers an account of the poet's career while assessing his verse and providing a sense of its perspective on Black America and the American experience.

Throughout his examination of Harper's verse, Antonucci builds on the critical attention the poet received at the outset of his career—he was twice nominated for the National Book Award. Exploring the poet's celebrated examinations of history, kinship, and Black music, Understanding Michael S. Harper develops and expands critical dialogues about the poet and his body of work, which, Antonucci argues, presents a counternarrative about the composition and origins of the United States, reshaping prevailing discourse about race, nation, and identity.
categories: Gift Ideas, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Education Policy & History,
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custom_subtitle:University of South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era
custom_byline1: Alan Piercy
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custom_author_blurb:Alan Piercy is a freelance writer who currently resides in Raleigh, North Carolina. Piercy is a Columbia, South Carolina, native; a 1995 graduate of the University of South Carolina; and lifelong Gamecock fan. He hosts a collection of his general interest writings online at Yellow Dog Journal, and his South by Southeast: A Gamecock History online newsletter features stories spanning decades of Gamecock athletics.
custom_reviews:"Alan Piercy captures with a historian's detail and a devoted fan's passion probably the most exciting yet traumatic era of Gamecocks athletics. I know because I was there for all of it. For Gamecocks fans or sports buffs, A Gamecock Odyssey will be a historical must-read."—Bob Gillespie, former senior sportswriter/columnist with The State Media and coauthor of South Carolina Golf

"Leaving the ACC, the mystery of Jimmy Foster, South Carolina's adoption and encouragement of women's sports, and even a foray into the Gamecocks' history of mascots, A Gamecock Odyssey shines light on several of the skeletons in USC's closets. Even if you thought you knew what really went on, Odyssey adds the details and nuances you missed."—David Cloninger, USC beat writer, Post and Courier

"Alan Piercy displays a landscape of Gamecock athletics that teaches me history is more complicated than just pointing out wins and losses. Written with a passion that is surely bleeding garnet and black, but with the journalistic integrity our programs deserve, A Gamecock Odyssey is a must-read for Gamecock fans of any generation."—Jim Sonefeld, former student athlete and drummer, Hootie & the Blowfish

"A captivating history of a unique and colorful era of USC sports—the twenty years that were sandwiched between ACC and SEC conference affiliation. Even the most ardent fans will gain new insights from this meticulously researched work. Odyssey is a must-read for all Gamecock fans young and old."—Mike Chibbaro, author of The Cadillac—The Life Story of University of South Carolina Football Legend Steve Wadiak

"The University of South Carolina's two decades as an independent competitor might have been a 'long wilderness path' in Alan Piercy's words, but Piercy's thorough and entertaining retelling of that period reminds us why so many engaging stories happen in the wilderness. With meticulous research and the perspective of countless people who were there through the rise and fall of the Gamecocks' fortunes between ACC and SEC membership, Piercy shines through as a born storyteller and a lifelong USC fan, determined to give everything from the rise of women's sports to the scandals of those years to the possibility of a 'chicken curse' their just due."—Bethany Bradsher, author of The Classic: How Everett Case and His Tournament Brought Big-Time Basketball to the South and Bones McKinney: Basketball's Unforgettable Showman

"A unique and nostalgic look back at an important part of Gamecock history."—Gamecocksonline.com
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content: Meet the coaches, athletes, and notable characters that laid the foundation for today's Gamecock Nation.

The summer of 1971 was especially hot in Columbia and not just because of the weather. It was that year that a long-simmering conflict between the University of South Carolina and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) reached the point of boiling over. Frustrations over the ACC's recruiting and admission standards, and growing pressure from influential athletics director and head football coach Paul Dietzel, led the board of trustees to cast a vote in favor of leaving the conference that USC had helped to found eighteen years earlier. This vote would mark the beginning of a new independent era of Gamecock athletics, but few at the time could have imagined the resulting twenty-year odyssey.

In A Gamecock Odyssey: University of South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era, Alan Piercy chronicles the significant events and describes the larger-than-life characters of the years following the university's departure from the ACC. The University of South Carolina experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows in its athletics history. Tales of interpersonal clashes between football head coach Paul Dietzel and men's basketball head coach Frank McGuire; the rise and fall of women's basketball coach Pam Parsons; George Rogers and his magical Heisman Trophy-winning season; the birth of USC's beloved mascot, Cocky; and other USC sports stories converge, stirring feelings of amusement, nostalgia, and pride.

With colorful storytelling and Gamecock pride, Piercy gives college sports fans a behind-the-scenes tour of these raucous decades. He explains how South Carolina's independent era tells the broader story of NCAA sports conference realignment, Title IX, the impact of the civil rights movement on college athletics, the evolution of college sports media coverage, and the development of college sports into a multi-billion-dollar business sustained by TV broadcast and licensing rights.

A Gamecock Odyssey captures the spirit of the time and shows the reader how those years influenced today's Gamecock culture and national obsession with college athletics.
categories: African American Studies, paperback, ebook, Books, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:The African Connection
custom_byline1: Karen Hess
custom_byline2: foreword by John Martin Taylor
compiled by Mrs. Samuel Gaillard Stoney
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custom_author_blurb:Karen Hess (1918–2007) was an accomplished culinary historian and author and editor of numerous books. She was once called "the best American cook in Paris" by Newsweek.
custom_reviews:"The author calls this work a hymn of praise for the Africans enslaved and brought to South Carolina to clear the cypress swamps and plant and tend rice crops. But she's too modest. It's more of a symphony than a hymn."—Baltimore Sun

"Hess once again has reached into the shuttered recesses of the Lowcountry plantation culture to find the path rice took to get here [. . .] and, most of all, the women who found miraculous ways to transform this hard cereal grain into Hoppin' John and a plenitude of pilaus and scores of other culinary wonders."—John Egerton, South Carolina Historical Magazine
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content: A pioneering history of the Carolina rice kitchen and its African influences

Where did rice originate? How did the name Hoppin' John evolve? Why was the famous rice called "Carolina Gold"?

The rice kitchen of early Carolina was the result of a myriad of influences—Persian, Arab, French, English, African—but it was primarily the creation of enslaved African American cooks. And it evolved around the use of Carolina Gold. Although rice had not previously been a staple of the European plantation owners, it began to appear on the table every day. Rice became revered and was eaten at virtually every meal and in dishes that were part of every course: soups, entrées, side dishes, dessert, and breads. The ancient way of cooking rice, developed in India and Africa, became the Carolina way. Carolina Gold rice was so esteemed that its very name became a generic term in much of the world for the finest long-grain rice available.

This engaging book is packed with fascinating historical details, including more than three hundred recipes and a facsimile of the Carolina Rice Cook Book from 1901. A new foreword by John Martin Taylor underscores Hess's legacy as a culinary historian and the successful revival of Carolina Gold rice.
categories: Civil Rights, Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Education Policy & History,
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Pages: 176
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custom_subtitle:Benner C. Turner, A Black College President in the Jim Crow South
custom_byline1: Travis D. Boyce
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custom_author_blurb:Travis D. Boyce is associate professor and chair of the department of African American Studies at San Jose State University. He is the coeditor of Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering.
custom_reviews:"A vivid account of South Carolina State University's history and presidential actions during the era of the Civil Rights Movement. The book reveals how Turner performed a balancing act, at once protecting the university from a white supremacist state government amidst the sweeping tides of Black progressive change."—F. Erik Brooks, PhD, provost and vice president for academic affairs, Central State University

"Boyce's engaging, insightful biography offers critical insights into a little understood and sometimes maligned historical figure, Benner C. Turner. Using spare but penetrating language, Boyce delves into the inner workings of a pragmatic conservative who repressed civil rights activism but nevertheless contributed to his college's advancement during extraordinarily repressive times."—June Manning Thomas, PhD, professor emerita, University of Michigan, and author of Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina
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content: Reassesses the career of Benner C. Turner, the polarizing African American president at South Carolina State during the civil rights era

Travis D. Boyce considers the full sweep of Benner C. Turner's life and career in the context of the contrary pressures of white and Black authority. Borrowing an expression from Michelle Obama's remarks to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Boyce casts Turner, long-serving president of South Carolina State University, as a steady and measured leader who preserved the limited resources his historically Black institution possessed in the face of often hostile social, political, and economic power structures.

Previous accounts of Turner and his SC State presidency portray him as unwilling to criticize the state's white power structure and unable to contend with their open resistance to civil rights. Boyce argues that the modern view of Turner flattens a complex terrain, often relying selectively on hostile sources, underplaying the political constraints on presidents of publicly funded HBCUs in the South. Considering Turner in a richer context, with a deep awareness of Turner's early life formative influences, Boyce provides a more complete critical examination of his leadership in trying times.
categories: Literary Studies, Cultural Studies & Sociology, Music & Theater, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Race and Nation in American Popular Culture
custom_byline1: Geoffrey Galt Harpham
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custom_author_blurb:Geoffrey Galt Harpham is the author of numerous books, including What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez? The American Revolution in Education and Scholarship and Freedom. He was president and director of the National Humanities Center from 2003–2015.
custom_reviews:"Beneath the evasions, cliches, and biases of popular entertainment, there is often a deeper truth. Geoffrey Harpham teaches us that this is so even when the subject is race in America. In this bold but patient, considered, and non-confrontational book, he gives us a better way to talk about works that were once celebrated but that can seem radioactive today."—Louis Menand, author of The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War

"Separate but equal? Nations are not born but made, and artistic action plays its part. Geoffrey Harpham's penetrating analysis of three icons of the silver screen and musical stage shows their grappling with race and identity to define an American future still being shaped by pernicious cultural memory."—Tim Carter, David G. Frey Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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content: A radical reinterpretation of three controversial works that illuminate racism and national identity in the United States

Citizenship on Catfish Row focuses on three seminal works in the history of American culture: the first full-length narrative film, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation; the first integrated musical, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Showboat; and the first great American opera, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Each of these works sought to make a statement about American identity in the form of a narrative, and each included in that narrative a prominent role for Black people.

Each work included jarring or discordant elements that pointed to a deeper tension between the kind of stories Americans wish to tell about themselves and the historical and social reality of race. Although all three have been widely criticized, their efforts to connect the concepts of nation and race are not only instructive about the history of the American imagination but also provide unexpected resources for contemporary reflection.
categories: Political Science, Rhetoric & Communication, Business & Economics, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Movement Rhetoric Rhetoric's Movements, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Authenticity and Instrumentalism in US Movement Rhetoric after Occupy
custom_byline1: A. Freya Thimsen
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custom_author_blurb:A. Freya Thimsen is an assistant professor in the English Department at Indiana University. Her work has been published in journals including Philosophy & Rhetoric, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Review of Communication.
custom_reviews:"The Democratic Ethos is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy. If a democrat is someone who is motivated by freedom, equality, social justice, and political practices that allow for all people to share power meaningfully, then democracy is not only a way of life but also a way of thinking and communicating. A. Freya Thimsen's analysis of Occupy Wall Street's democratic ethos advances our understanding of how democratic thinking and democratic communication work together to create democratic possibilities."—Jennifer Mercieca, author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump

"The Democratic Ethos gives lie to the facile conclusion that Occupy led nowhere and insightfully untangles the dialectic of authenticity and instrumental effort that lies at the heart of politics and ethos alike."—Peter Simonson, University of Colorado Boulder

"In clear and accessible readings of current practices of rhetorical citizenship, A. Freya Thimsen masterfully connects ancient rhetorical concepts with contemporary political theory and media criticism in a theoretical account of lived movement activism. This book epitomizes rhetorical scholarship at its best: a critical yet constructively oriented analysis of ways to engage contemporary societal problems."—Lisa S. Villadsen, University of Copenhagen

"A. Freya Thimsen offers an exquisite analysis of how the performance of an authentic democratic ethos does more than prefigure the democratic processes internal to movements. After Occupy, she argues, the display of an authentic democratic ethos has become a means of public persuasion to garner support for instrumental changes against undemocratic state practices. A must-read for social movement scholars."—Ronald Walter Greene, University of Minnesota
custom_awards:Winner of the 2023 James A. Winans - Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address
content: A multidisciplinary analysis of the lasting effects of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement

What did Occupy Wall Street accomplish? While it began as a startling disruption in politics as usual, in The Democratic Ethos Freya Thimsen argues that the movement's long-term importance rests in how its commitment to radical democratic self-organization has been adopted within more conventional forms of politics. Occupy changed what counts as credible democratic coordination and how democracy is performed, as demonstrated in opposition to corporate political influence, rural antifracking activism, and political campaigns.

By comparing instances of progressive politics that demonstrate the democratic ethos developed and promoted by Occupy and those that do not, Thimsen illustrates how radical and conventional rhetorical strategies can be brought together to seek democratic change. Combining insights from rhetorical studies, performance studies, political theory, and sociology, The Democratic Ethos offers a set of conceptual tools for analyzing anticorporate democracy-movement politics in the twenty-first century.
categories: Literary Studies, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Cultures of Resistance, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies,
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custom_subtitle:Black Women, Sexual Violence, and Complex Imaginings of Justice
custom_byline1: Maya Hislop
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custom_author_blurb:Maya Hislop is assistant professor of English at California Polytechnic State University. Her work has appeared in Law and Literature and Women's Studies.
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content: A probing analysis of Black women's attempts to pursue justice for sexual violence victims within often hostile social and legal systems

In Bodies in the Middle: Black Women, Sexual Violence, and Complex Imaginings of Justice, Maya Hislop examines the lack of place that Black women experience, specifically when they are victims of sexual violence. Hislop uses both historical and literary analysis to explore how women, in the face of indifference and often hostility, have sought to redefine justice for themselves. Hislop develops a framework she calls "Afro-pessimistic justice." Afro-pessimism begins from the belief that Black life in America, and in turn the American justice system, is constrained within a framework of anti-Blackness meant to enforce white supremacy. Beginning from this baseline, Hislop centers the experience of Black women while also acknowledging that formal legal justice is illusive, perhaps impossible, within systems built on anti-Black violence. Inspired by the work of Black studies luminaries like Orlando Patterson, Sylvia Wynter, and Fred Moten, Hislop asks what justice can look like in the absence of total victory and how Black women have attempted to define alternative paths to a more just future. Caught in the double bind because of their racial and gender identities, Black women are especially vulnerable within a web of social and legal systems that too often discount their humanity and diminish their legal standing.
categories: U.S. History, Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, New & Noteworthy, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Jewish Studies,
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Pages: 248
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custom_subtitle:A History of Immigration, Assimilation, and Loneliness
custom_byline1: Daniel Wolff
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custom_author_blurb:Daniel Wolff is an award-winning author of numerous books, including Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 and The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back.
custom_reviews:"How to Become an American is a beautiful book. At its conclusion, we feel an intimate connection with the diary's author and her family, and we may even see our own family's history reflected in her experience—a very personal story that could belong to any Jewish American family."—Jewish Book Council

"A powerful, mesmerizing story of what it means to uproot your whole life and become a citizen in an energetic, often unwelcoming new country. Using family letters, photographs, and a light green diary, author Daniel Wolff brings to life the absorbing saga of an unnamed Jewish family as they face tumultuous events in a raw, young nation. Moving from Bohemia to the American South, the family's definition of citizenship is continually redefined, impacted by Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, a pandemic, and World Wars. Along the way, the immigrants ask what it means to be an American (and when, exactly, will you become one). They grapple with racism, reversals of fortune, a relocation to the Midwest, a family betrayal, and the undertow of loneliness. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Wolff has written an American masterpiece."—Michael Lee West, author of Mad Girls in Love, Crazy Ladies, American Pie, She Flew the Coop, and Consuming Passions

"Would that we had more such diaries, found treasures, which expand what we know and how we understand the vast human drama of immigration. Beyond the well known personal narratives and troves of statistics, How to Become an American takes us, scholars and general readers as well, on an intimate journey into the experiences of a single individual who never expected that the story would be available to so many strangers, long decades after she lived and endured."—Hasia Diner, Director, Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History, New York University

"Authenticity and lyricism draw the reader on the journey that becomes a tale of Everyman, or Everywoman, striving to become American and overcome the existential loneliness that motivates the narrator. Compelling events, astutely observed and presented with literary flair, drive Daniel Wolff's writing from start to finish."—Dale Rosengarten, founding curator of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston

"In this inspired work, Daniel Wolff uses the diary of an unnamed woman to chart the long history of immigration and acculturation in America. He turns what might be viewed as a familiar story into a lyrical meditation on location and dislocation, love and loss, and what it means to be an American. This is a book about history and memory, a loving work of recovery that achieves what all great books strive for: it allows us to see ourselves in this remarkable woman's story."—Louis Masur, Board of Governors Professor of American Studies and History, Rutgers University

"[W]hat Wolff did with this diary is extraordinary: he used it to weave together a multigenerational story of the immigrant experience, the American experience, and the Jewish experience"—Jewish Book Council
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content: An odyssey from pre-Civil War Charleston to post-World War II Minneapolis through Jewish immigrants' eyes

The histories of US immigrants do not always begin and end in Ellis Island and northeastern cities. Many arrived earlier and some migrated south and west, fanning out into their vast new country. They sought a renewed life, fresh prospects, and a safe harbor, despite a nation that was not always welcoming and not always tolerant.

How to Become an American begins with an abandoned diary—and from there author Daniel Wolff examines the sweeping history of immigration into the United States through the experiences of one unnamed, seemingly unremarkable Jewish family, and, in the process, makes their lives remarkable. It is a deeply human odyssey that journeys from pre-Civil War Charleston, South Carolina, to post-World War II Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some ways, the family's journey parallels that of the nation, as it struggled to define itself through the Industrial Age. A persistent strain of loneliness permeates this story, and Wolff holds up this theme for contemplation. In a country that prides itself on being "a nation of immigrants," where "all men are created equal," why do we end up feeling alone in the land we love?
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary British Literature, World Literature, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_byline1: Tison Pugh
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custom_author_blurb:Tison Pugh is author or editor of over twenty-five books, including The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom and Harry Potter and Beyond: On J. K. Rowling's Fantasies and Other Fictions. He is Pegasus Professor in the Department of English, University of Central Florida.
custom_reviews:"An excellent introduction to the world of Agatha Christie. Pugh offers an engaging, thoughtful, and well-researched discussion of the Queen of Crime, which will delight both scholars and fans."—Mark Aldridge, author of Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World

"A thoroughly entertaining study of the world's most popular writer. Pugh discusses Christie's personal life—her political views, theater, and incredible body of literature spanning most of the twentieth century. Like one of her own mysteries, Understanding Agatha Christie is a swiftly moving account of the author, written by someone who clearly knows her subject."—Blake Allmendinger, University of California, Los Angeles

"Tison Pugh offers readers an accessible way into the mysteries of Agatha Christie and the paradoxes and conversations around her remarkable body of work. Understanding Agatha Christie shows us why it's important not to underestimate popular writers and gives every reader a foothold to enjoy and discuss the world's best-selling novelist."—J.C. Bernthal, University of Suffolk, author of Queering Agatha Christie

"Do we really need help in understanding Agatha Christie? Tison Pugh begs to suggest that we do. Proposing a seven-paradox series that shapes Christie's deceptively accessible detective fiction, from her constant challenging of the rules associated with the Golden Age models she established to her frequent introduction of serious violence into the pastoral world she created to the successful promotion of her work by screen adaptations she disdained, Pugh makes a convincing case that there's a lot more to Christie than all those unguessable endings."—Thomas Leitch, Kirkpatrick Chair of Writing, University of Delaware
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content: Explores seven startling paradoxes behind the bestselling novelist's lasting popularity

Agatha Christie stands as the bestselling novelist of all time and, in terms of total sales in all genres, places only behind the Christian Bible and Shakespeare. Since the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, Christie's fiction has withstood the envy of her peers and the snipes of critics, while garnering the admiration of countless readers.

From her puzzling persona (notably in her eleven-day disappearance in 1926) and status as "Queen of the Cozies" to her tragicomic themes and critiques of Englishness, Christie built a lasting literary legacy that perplexes and pleases her hordes of readers. In Understanding Agatha Christie, Tison Pugh takes a fresh look at the contemporary world's most popular author, investigating seven notable paradoxes behind her lasting success, thereby illuminating the literary innovations that have contributed to her uncannily timeless appeal.
categories: Literary Studies, East-West Encounters in Literature and Cultural Studies, World Literature, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:The Intricate Journey of a Monistic Idea
custom_byline1: Yu Liu
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custom_author_blurb:Dr. Yu Liu is a professor of English at Niagara County Community College in New York State. In addition to over thirty-five essays in peer-reviewed journals of literature, history, and philosophy, he is the author of Poetics and Politics: The Revolutions of Wordsworth (1999), Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal (2008), and Harmonious Disagreement: Matteo Ricci and His Closest Chinese Friends (2015). For his research, he has received the support of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship (2006-2007), a Fulbright fellowship at City University of Hong Kong (2012-2013), a Karlgren-Eisenstadt Residential Fellowship at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (spring of 2018), and numerous short-term library research fellowships in the United States and Great Britain.
custom_reviews:"Yu Liu offers a groundbreaking analysis of cross-cultural exchange by exploring the influence of Chinese philosophical traditions on English art, gardening, and literature up to the Romantic period. This is a must-read for scholars interested in Anglo-Chinese relations between 1600 and 1830."—Robert Markley, W. D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor of English, University of Illinois

"In this deeply learned study, Yu Liu traces a 'relay of ideas' that made their way from Chinese philosophy to Western Romanticism, transformed along the way in Spinoza's thought and in theories of English landscape gardening. A tour de force of intellectual history, his book shapes a persuasive story out of disparate strands whose significance deepens when seen in a unifying perspective."—Leo Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Research Professor of Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University

"A thoughtful and imaginative attempt to trace the migration of the ancient Chinese cosmological unity of heaven and humanity to seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century Europe via the China Jesuits, Spinoza, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, leading to the redesign of English gardens and Romantic poetry."—D. E. Mungello, professor of history emeritus, Baylor University

"In his powerfully original monograph, From Chinese Cosmology to English Romanticism, Yu Liu upends the all-too-familiar asymmetry of theorizing Chinese culture through a Western conceptual structure. He mounts a carefully documented and compelling argument that the 'idea' of the persistent Chinese organismic worldview captured in the language of 'humanity's unity with nature' set its roots in the antinomian European Enlightenment thinkers as early as the complex Rites Controversy, and then spreads out as a root system through the heretical philosopher Spinoza to shape British Romanticism in all of its parts."—Roger T. Ames, Peking University
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content: A culturally sensitive and rewarding new understanding of the cross-cultural interaction between China and Europe

In this important new work author Yu Liu argues that, confined by a narrow English and European conceptual framework, scholars have so far obscured the radical innovation and revolutionary implication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth's monistic philosophy. Liu's innovative intellectual history traces the organic westward movement of the Chinese concept of tianren heyi, or humanity's unity with heaven. This monistic idea enters the European imaginary through Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci's understanding of Chinese culture, travels through Spinoza's identification of God with nature, becomes ingrained in eighteenth-century English thought via the langscaping theory and practice of William Kent and Horace Walpole, and emerges in the poetry and thought of Coleridge and Wordsworth. In addition to presenting a significantly different reading of the two English poets, Liu contributes to scholarship about English literary history, history of European philosophy and religion, English garden history, and cross-cultural interactions between China and Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
categories: Southern History, Gift Ideas, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:The Untold History of an American Tradition
custom_byline1: Joseph R. Haynes
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custom_author_blurb:Joseph R. Haynes is an award-winning barbecue cook, a Kansas City Barbeque Society Master Certified Barbecue Judge, and the author of Virginia Barbecue: A History and Brunswick Stew: A Virginia Tradition. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
custom_reviews:"In From Barbycu to Barbecue, Joseph R. Haynes's exhaustive research gives some much-needed fresh air to barbecue's early, and hazy, history. This is a welcome addition to a growing barbecue canon."—Adrian Miller, James Beard Award-winning author and certified barbecue judge

"From Barbycu to Barbecue is the major missing link to understanding true barbecue in the United States. Haynes's years of research and analysis in evaluating the invention of Barbecue is clearly exhibited. This book is necessary for people that want to get the most accurate understanding of barbecue history available."—Howard J. Conyers, Ph.D., barbecue expert

"In a field which is still colored by invented traditions, rumors masquerading as facts, Haynes's work stands out as a properly historical act. He has done a fantastic job in finding new material to illuminate more precisely the African, indigenous, and European influences in American barbecue traditions. This is a work that pushes beyond the speculations of the past to establish the parameters of 'the barbecue archive' far more firmly than before."—Andrew Warnes, author of Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food

"Haynes' books, most notably Virginia Barbecue: A History and now From Barbycu to Barbecue, completely refute the currently accepted mainstream viewpoint on the origins of barbecue as we know it today, specifically the false premise that southern barbecue began in the Caribbean. At first glance, his assertions may strike some as absurd, but once you read his work and consider his meticulous research, it becomes clear that it's not Haynes that's off the wall but rather the current understanding of the mainstream concerning southern barbecue's birthplace. Alongside the likes of barbecue scholars Adrian Miller, Daniel Vaughn and Andrew Warnes, Haynes deserves a much-earned place at the pit where the in-depth conversations of barbecue's history are being had. His commonsense conclusions backed up by his commitment to research result in writing that is essential to better understanding the origins of southern barbecue."—Joshua Fitzwater, editor and publisher, Southern Grit

"[The] most important part of [Haynes's] extensive research is debunking the many myths that the barbecue community has generally accepted to explain its origin. [. . .] Haynes's thoroughness will be comforting to barbecue and history nerds alike [. . .]"—David Vaughn, Texas Monthly
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content: An award-winning barbecue cook boldly asserts that southern barbecuing is a unique American tradition that was not imported.

The origin story of barbecue is a popular topic with a ravenous audience, but commonly held understandings of barbecue are often plagued by half-truths and misconceptions. From Barbycu to Barbecue offers a fresh new look at the story of southern barbecuing. Award winning barbecue cook Joseph R. Haynes sets out to correct one of the most common barbecue myths, the "Caribbean Origins Theory," which holds that the original southern barbecuing technique was imported from the Caribbean to what is today the American South. Rather, Haynes argues, the southern whole carcass barbecuing technique that came to define the American tradition developed via direct and indirect collaboration between Native Americans, Europeans, and free and enslaved people of African descent during the seventeenth century. Haynes's barbycu-to-barbecue history analyzes historical sources throughout the Americas that show that the southern barbecuing technique is as unique to the United States as jerked hog is to Jamaica and barbacoa is to Mexico. A recipe in each chapter provides a contemporary interpretation of a historical technique.
categories: Art & Photography, Civil Rights, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:The Civil Rights Photography of Cecil Williams
custom_byline1: Cecil Williams and Claudia Smith Brinson
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custom_author_blurb:Cecil Williams was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in 1937. At nine years old he became fascinated with photography after his older brother passed down a Baby Brownie Special. Williams dedicated himself to photographing civil rights activism, which he called a "journey toward freedom, justice, and equality" for Black publications such as Jet, Ebony, and the Crisis, and for white-owned newspapers through the Associated Press. In 2019 he founded the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum, which preserves and exhibits photographs, documents, and artifacts from the state's civil rights activists. It is the state's first and only civil rights museum. Williams lives in Orangeburg, SC.

Claudia Smith Brinson is an award-winning journalist with more than thirty years of experience at newspapers in Greece, Florida, and South Carolina. Brinson spent most of her journalism career with Knight Ridder at The State newspaper in Columbia, SC, while also freelancing for national publications. She is the author of Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press). Brinson lives in Columbia, SC.
custom_reviews:"No one has done more to preserve the legacy of the courageous men and women who led the crusade for civil rights in South Carolina than Cecil Williams. Now Cecil Williams and Claudia Smith Brinson have combined to tell the fascinating story of the man, his camera, and the remarkable people whose history he so carefully recorded."—William Hine, professor emeritus of history, South Carolina State University, and author of South Carolina State University: A Black Land-Grant College in Jim Crow America

"Injustice in Focus is the combination of an extraordinary photographer and outstanding journalist producing an important historical account of the civil right struggle in SC."—W. Lewis Burke, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of South Carolina School of Law

"With brilliance and great perception, Injustice in Focus illuminates the life of SC photographer Cecil Williams, a national treasure. Because the curious and ambitious Williams found himself amid a state-wide transformation, the book is much more than a biography of this remarkable man. It delivers a masterful and essential account of the SC civil rights movement and illustrates how important South Carolina was to the national movement. Williams and Brinson weave a rich tapestry of heroes: Clarendon County's Black parents, sharecroppers, farmers, teachers, ministers, and others who became the plaintiffs in Briggs v. Elliott; the student activists in the Orangeburg Freedom Movement and the Orangeburg Massacre; Matthew Perry and Harvey Gantt's integration of Clemson University, and so many more. This powerful examination of SC events demolishes the fallacy of anything dignified about the white reaction to equal rights. Williams is a visual storyteller, record-maker, and historian. Injustice exudes authenticity: Williams was there; he took the pictures. With vivid details that many in the national civil rights community do not know, this book is an extraordinary contribution to historical understanding."—Orville Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Professor of History, Clemson University; Emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University of Illinois; coauthor of Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court

"The book gives the reader intimate insights into the daring heroics displayed by Cecil Williams while documenting South Carolina's fight for freedom and justice during the 1940s through the 1960s. Williams's personal narrative and photos combined with a synthesis of extraordinary historical research are highly effective in lifting up courageous civil rights leaders and simultaneously illuminating South Carolina's record of discrimination, violence, and persecution during this period."—Henry N. Tisdale, President Emeritus, Claflin University

"Injustice in Focus is a treasure for anyone interested and committed to a broader understanding of the American civil rights narrative. Williams and Brinson combine their exemplary journalistic talents to brilliantly interweave the lives involved in this extraordinary account of South Carolina history that provided context and laid the foundation for advancing citizenship rights to Black people so long denied in the South."—Roy I. Jones, Ed.D., Professor & Executive Director, Call Me MiSTER Program, College of Education, Clemson University

"A believer that "history must be written when new truths are uncovered," Cecil Williams has compelled us to study and remember the Civil Rights Movement in dramatically new ways. As this publication powerfully illustrates, Williams' work prompts deep reflection, stirs memories, and fills vital voids and omissions in the historical record."—Dr. Bobby Donaldson, history professor, Clyburn Professor of Public Service and Civic Engagement, and executive director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, H-Net Reviews
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content: The powerful life story and photography of an esteemed Black photojournalist

Cecil Williams is one of the few Southern Black photojournalists of the civil rights movement. Born and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Williams worked at the center of emerging twentieth-century civil rights activism in the state, and his assignments often exposed him to violence perpetrated by White law officials and ordinary citizens. Williams's story is the story of the civil rights era.

Williams and award-winning journalist Claudia Smith Brinson combine forces in Injustice in Focus: The Civil Rights Photography of Cecil Williams. Together they document civil rights activism in the 1940s through the 1960s in South Carolina. Williams was there, in South Carolina, to witness and document pivotal movements such as then-NAACP legal counsel Thurgood Marshall's arrival in Charleston to argue the landmark case Briggs v. Elliott and the aftermath of the infamous Orangeburg Massacre.

Featuring eighty stunning photographs accompanied by Brinson's rich research, interviews, and prose, Injustice in Focus offers a firsthand account of South Carolina's fight for civil rights and describes Williams's life behind the camera as a documentarian of the civil rights movement.
categories: Southern History, Civil War, Reconstruction Era, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:James Chesnut, Honor, and Emotion in the American South
custom_byline1: Anna Koivusalo
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custom_author_blurb:Anna Koivusalo is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and a former visiting Fulbright scholar both at the University of South Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
custom_reviews:"It is simultaneously a fine narrative of Chesnut's political journey from unionist to secessionist; a nuanced look at the cultural expectations Southern honor played in mapping that journey; and a deeply intimate study of the ways Chesnut tailored his emotions to navigate between 'raw' and 'honorable' expressions of Southern manhood. A fresh perspective long overdue."—John Mayfield, author of Counterfeit Gentlemen: Manhood and Honor in the Old South

"In this compelling study, Anna Koivusalo takes James Chesnut—South Carolina politician, secessionist, and Confederate officer—as a subject in his own right. No longer a lurker in the diary made famous by his wife Mary, James emerges as an actor whose efforts to manage his emotions by appealing to honor's dictates tells us a great deal about how mid-nineteenth century Americans experienced and understood their feelings. In so doing, The Man Who Started the Civil War offers new ways of thinking about questions that have long animated the field"—Sarah Gardner, Distinguished University Professor of History, Mercer University

"Anna Koivusalo has made a wholly original contribution to South Carolina history with the first full-length biography of James Chesnut, one of the state's most surprisingly neglected nineteenth-century luminaries. Moreover, by braiding the analysis of honor and emotion she has reinvigorated the study of southern honor and demonstrated the enduring value of emotions as a lens for historical analysis."—Michael E. Woods, Author of Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy

"Anna Koivusalo's book fairly bristles with exciting ideas about the intersection of honor and emotion across multiple planes in the Old South. Impressive research and innovative analysis yield a close understanding of the vexing, important South Carolina politician James Chesnut Jr. and the world that shaped him. This is a valuable, judicious biography and much more. The Man Who Started the Civil War advances the scholarly conversation on important problems with clarity and insight."—Lawrence McDonnell, Author of Performing Disunion: The Coming of the Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina

"Koivusalo brings Chesnut's lost world to life. Her work is academic in the best sense of the word: analytic, revelatory, and innovative. . . The Man Who Started the Civil War is, like its subject, a complex work that demands serious attention. Readers picking up the book with this frame of mind will be well rewarded."—Civil War Book Review

"Koivusalo's biography and analysis of James Chesnut in the context of the wider South is a valuable addition to the study of southern culture."—Journal of Southern History
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content: A fresh biography of a neglected figure in Southern history who played a pivotal role in the Civil War.

In the predawn hours of April 12, 1861, James Chesnut Jr. piloted a small skiff across the Charleston Harbor and delivered the fateful order to open fire on Fort Sumter—the first shots of the Civil War. In The Man Who Started the Civil War, Anna Koivusalo offers the first comprehensive biography of Chesnut and through him a history of honor and emotion in elite white southern culture. Koivusalo reveals the dynamic, and at times fragile, nature of these concepts as they were tested and transformed from the era of slavery through Reconstruction.

Best remembered as the husband of Mary Boykin Chesnut, author of A Diary from Dixie, James Chesnut served in the South Carolina legislature and as a US senator before becoming a leading figure in the South's secession from the Union. Koivusalo recounts how honor and emotion shaped Chesnut's life events and the decisions that culminated in the cataclysm of civil war. Challenging the traditional view of honor as a code, Koivusalo illuminates honor's vital but fickle role as a source for summoning, channeling, and expressing emotion in the nineteenth-century South.
categories: Art & Photography, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:Revisiting "I Made This Jar" and the Legacy of Edgefield Pottery
custom_byline1: edited by Jill Beute Koverman and Jane Przybysz
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custom_author_blurb:Jane Przybysz has served as executive director of McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina since 2011. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Jill Beute Koverman was chief curator of collections at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina when she died in 2013.
custom_reviews:"Much of what the world knows about the enslaved Edgefield potter, artist, and poet David "Dave" Drake is the direct result of ceramic scholar Jill Koverman's original 1998 groundbreaking publication. This updated and greatly expanded volume—with essays contributed by a legion of Koverman's acolytes—now reflects the most comprehensive thinking on Dave and his important place in American social history and culture. It is essential reading for all students of American ceramics history."—Robert Hunter, editor, Ceramics in America

"Combining exceptional potting skills with inscribed verses, names, dates, and symbols, David ["Dave"] Drake is recognized as one of the most consequential Black artisans of the nineteenth century. This collection of essays sheds light on Dave's life and pottery and is a valuable contribution to our understanding of southern folk art and Black potters of the Edgefield District."—J. W. Joseph, PhD, RPA, New South Associates, Inc.

"Like I Made This Jar before it, The Words and Wares of David Drake presents an excellent spectrum of perspectives attesting to African American creativity, perseverance, and accomplishment. Artists and experts present new, distinct, and fascinating insights into David Drake's intellect and artistry within cross-currents of African, European, and Asian legacies."—Christopher Fennell, professor of anthropology and law, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
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content: A celebration of the remarkable poem vessels of Dave the Potter

David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was born enslaved in Edgefield in the backcountry of South Carolina near the Savannah River. Despite laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read or write, David was literate and signed some of his pots. His practice was not only to add his name and a date but also to embellish his work with verse—a powerful statement of resistance.

The Words and Wares of David Drake collects multifaceted scholarship about David and his craft. Building on the 1998 national traveling exhibit catalog, I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave, and featuring more than one hundred beautiful images and six new essays, this authoritative volume presents the diverse perspectives of scholars, artists, and collectors.

The Words and Wares of David Drake adds important depth and context to our understanding of both Edgefield pottery and the life of Dave.

David's work is now so highly prized it is the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth-century ceramic art from Edgefield.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 8, 2022-February 5, 2023)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6, 2023-July 9, 2023)
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023-January 7, 2024)
High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16, 2024-May 12, 2024)
categories: Rhetoric & Communication, Cultural Studies & Sociology, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience
custom_byline1: Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre
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custom_author_blurb:Ashli Quesinberry Stokes is professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Wendy Atkins-Sayre is professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Film at the University of Memphis. The two have collaborated on Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South and coedited City Places, Country Spaces: Rhetorical Explorations of the Urban/Rural Divide.
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content: A journey through Southern Appalachia to explore the complex messages food communicates about the region.

Depictions of Appalachian food culture and practices often romanticize people in the region as good, simple, and, often, white. These stereotypes are harmful to the actual people they are meant to describe as well as to those they exclude. In Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre tell a more complicated story. The authors embark on a cultural tour through food and drinking establishments to investigate regional resilience in and through the plurality of traditions and communities that form the foodways of Southern Appalachia. They visit cafes serving cornbread and beans, a critically acclaimed soul food restaurant, distilleries, festivals celebrating Cherokee and Scottish heritage, a community center and garden serving under-resourced neighbors, and many other food and drinking venues. Hungry Roots demonstrates why Appalachian food matters.
categories: Civil Rights, Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:My Journey from Civil Rights to Black Power and Beyond
custom_byline1: Millicent E. Brown
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custom_author_blurb:Millicent E. Brown is a retired associate professor of history from Claflin University, having taught at several other institutions of higher education. She is a lifelong community advocate and spokesperson for improvements in historically and currently exploited neighborhoods and communities of color. Currently she consults with museums, historical sites, and organizations seeking more accurate analyses of social justice initiatives.
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content: Memories and insights of a lifelong social justice advocate as she searches for freedom as an African American woman

Millicent E. Brown's family home at 270 Ashley Avenue in Charleston, South Carolina, was a center of civil rights activity. There Brown gained intimate knowledge of the struggle for racial justice, and those experiences set her on a life course dedicated to the civil rights struggle. Best known as the named plaintiff in the federal court case that, in 1963, forced the initial desegregation of public schools in South Carolina, her experiences as an activist range across years and well beyond her native state. Another Sojourner Looking for Truth is Brown's insightful reflection on her search for freedom in a nation deeply mired in white supremacist beliefs and overt violence against people of color.

In this revealing memoir, Brown writes about her fears and doubts, as well as the challenges of being a teenager expected to "represent the race" to combat negative stereotypes of African Americans. Readers also gain perspective on the interpersonal aspects of white backlash to civil rights progress and strategic machinations within the movement. Overall, Brown's words will inform, inspire, and challenge everyone to better understand the civil rights struggle and confront its ongoing challenges.
categories: paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Education Policy & History,
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custom_subtitle:University 101 at the University of South Carolina
custom_byline1: edited by Daniel B. Friedman, Tracy L. Skipper, and Catherine S. Greene
custom_byline2: foreword by John N. Gardner
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custom_author_blurb:Daniel B. Friedman is executive director of University 101 Programs and affiliate faculty in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at the University of South Carolina.

Tracy L. Skipper is an editor, writer, and student success scholar.

Catherine S. Greene is responsible for the University 101 Program's campus partnerships.
custom_reviews:"An inspiring history of how a campus envisioned and executed a truly student-centered course that galvanized the whole campus community to provide students with a holistic, inclusive, and personally validating first-year experience. The practices and principles underlying UNIV 101's well-documented impact should be intentionally incorporated into all first-year seminar models."—Joe Cuseo, Professor Emeritus, Psychology, Marymount California University

"From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer [addresses] not only the history of the University 101 course at the University of South Carolina but also the ingredients that made this remarkable experiment such a success. Anyone associated with first-year seminars will find rich resources within these pages for creating an effective and enduring program based on the principles that the authors have so carefully researched and documented."—Laurie A. Schreiner, Professor of Higher Education, Azusa Pacific University

"[Reading From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer] takes me back to my days as a first-generation student trying tonavigate a foreign land to hopefully a successful destination. It also takes me back to my early days as a professor . . . when I promised myself and my students I would help them to not have such a new immigrant experience. Friedman and his co-contributors do a wonderful job of not only telling the University of South Carolina's ground-breaking history of organizing a holistic course and designing a foundational experience for new students, they also lay out how visionary leaders thought about transforming student learning. . . . We know the role UofSC has played in the first-year movement. [This book] provides a roadmap for those that have not yet joined the movement.""—Aaron Thompson, President of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

"As a key social movement in higher education, University 101 changed the way colleges and universities welcome new students, resulting in greater academic achievement and higher first-to-second-year persistence rates. From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer commemorates fifty years of the transformative first-year seminar model by recounting its rich history and revealing its masterplan, while looking to the future by encouraging innovation about what is still needed to help new students transition into and through their undergraduate education"—Jillian Kinzie, Interim Co-Director, National Survey of Student Engagement, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research
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content: An exploration of the University of South Carolina's trailblazing approach to the first-year experience

As an innovative educational experiment, University 101 was designed to support students' transition to and success in college. Now, fifty years after its inception, the program continues to bring national recognition to the University of South Carolina. From Educational Experiment to Standard Bearer celebrates this milestone by exploring the course's origins; its evolution and success at the university; its impact on first-year students, upper-level students serving as peer leaders, faculty and staff instructors, and the university community and culture; and its role in launching the international first-year experience movement.

By highlighting the most significant takeaways, lessons learned, and insights to practitioners on other campuses, this book will serve as an inspiration and road map for other institutions to invest in this proven concept and focus on the ingredients that lead to a successful program. John N. Gardner, founding director and architect of University 101, provides a foreword.
categories: Southern History, Business & Economics, paperback, ebook, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:How Electric Cooperatives Transformed Rural South Carolina
custom_byline1: Lacy K. Ford and Jared Bailey
custom_byline2: foreword by James E. Clyburn
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custom_author_blurb:Lacy K. Ford, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, is the author of several books, including Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South.
custom_reviews:"Electric cooperatives have had an enduring role in improving the quality of life of South Carolinians for nearly a century. From delivering electricity for the first time to rural homes in the 1930s and 1940s to their modern efforts to ensure availability of high-speed internet to underserved communities, the co-ops have adapted to the changing needs of the people they serve, and our state is better for it."—Henry McMaster, governor, South Carolina

"The authors have chronicled the history of South Carolina and trends across the South. Few of those stories are as important as the emergence of electric cooperatives in South Carolina and other states that brought prosperity to rural areas. This compelling account of the state's electric co-ops reveals the importance of these member-owned entities to the communities they serve, extending beyond energy delivery to economic prosperity and, more recently, closing the digital divide."—Jim Matheson, CEO, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

"As a cooperative with a demonstrated track record of being totally committed to the seventh Cooperative Principle, we have sought guidance and affirmation from our South Carolina colleagues who hold a lead position in delivering industry recruitment, community development, and energy efficiency programs and services. Leveraging ideas and sharing lessons learned, as we have done, are major contributors to rural electric cooperatives' eighty-plus years of success in serving rural America."—Curtis Wynn, president and CEO, Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina, and immediate past president, board of directors, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

"South Carolina's electric cooperatives have skillfully navigated the state's complicated and often treacherous political waters for more than half a century, helping South Carolina avoid the shoals of catastrophe with disastrous commitments to dirty, expensive, outmoded energy production—most notably stopping construction of the infamous 'last coal plant in America' on the banks of the Pee Dee River. Meanwhile, the leadership has steered these consumer-owned companies toward important investments in conservation and renewable energy. Today as we embark on a critical period in energy service, we need the co-ops' innovation and responsiveness more than ever."—Dana Beach, founder and executive director emeritus, South Carolina Coastal Conservation League

"Implementing the 'Help My House' program demonstrates the deep caring and commitment the South Carolina electric co-op leadership has for the well-being of their members, many of whom are struggling to meet basic daily needs. It has been a joy for me to work with the co-ops on HMH from the start!"—Carol Werner, director emerita and senior fellow, Environmental and Energy Study Institute

"In the 1930s many questioned whether the fledgling Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina had the expertise to serve their members. That question was answered long ago. Yet, even today they act like they have something to prove."—Ted Case, executive director, Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association
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content: Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area, bringing not only power but also high-speed broadband to rural communities.

The rise of "public" power—electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation—is a complicated saga encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural economic development. Empowering Communities examines how the cooperatives helped bring fundamental and transformational change to the lives of rural people in South Carolina, from light to broadband.

James E. Clyburn, the majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, provides a foreword.
categories: Cultural Studies & Sociology, Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, New & Noteworthy, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Jewish Studies,
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custom_subtitle:A Memoir
custom_byline1: Judy Goldman
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custom_author_blurb:Judy Goldman is the award-winning author of seven books including Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap, named one of the best books of 2019 by Real Simple. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
custom_reviews:"Child is brave and lyrically told, a hymn of praise to a woman Goldman adored."—Charlotte Observer

"[Goldman] looks back on her life with a discerning eye that is able to appraise the dichotomy of her Southern upbringing. This act of remembering and then re-seeing brings a whiplash of honest realizations to the memoir's pages. ... Child shows that truth—at least truth of a sort—can be found."—SouthPark

"A gently told memoir of a cherished woman."—Kirkus

"A rich memoir that is long overdue, Child examines a Jewish child's loving relationship with a Black woman in the segregated South."—Foreword Reviews

"[A] fascinating memoir..."—The Charlotte Jewish News

"This moving memoir of a Black woman's importance in a white family reminds me that behind, under, and above the racial divide in the South, there ran strong currents of abiding love and mutual protection. These currents Judy Goldman excels at exploring without illusion and with full humanity. What a brave and timely book."—Frances Mayes, New York Times bestselling author of Under Magnolia and Under the Tuscan Sun

"Steeped in vivid, evocative memories of her southern childhood, Goldman's moving memoir "re-inhabits" and "interprets" the past: a white child growing up in a Black woman's care. It's a brave undertaking to explore the complexities of that time and place, but Goldman's wise, clear-eyed recognition of truth moves the memories into a new place."—Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Hieroglyphics

"With mesmerizing detail and remarkable acuity, with a storyteller's ear and a poet's precision, Judy Goldman conveys, in Child, the profound goodness that shaped her, the antinomies that haunt her, and the mysteries that exert themselves even within the gilded frame of love."—Beth Kephart, National Book Award finalist and author of Wife Daughter Self: A Memoir in Essays and We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class

"Child is as profound a memoir as I've ever read. In one gorgeously rendered scene after another, Goldman illuminates the paradoxes of a loving childhood built on "unconscionable scaffolding." To read this riveting book is to learn how to hold the finest detail up to the light, how to examine all memory."—Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones

"Judy Goldman cuts through the mist of memory to find a deeper truth in her relationship with her family's longtime housekeeper, Mattie. It's a story about love, family, privilege and prejudice, seen through the eyes of innocence and the eyes of experience. What a stunning feat."—Tommy Tomlinson, author of The Elephant in the Room

"South-turned-North Carolinian Judy Goldman has essentially mastered the art of the memoir. This book unpacks a common Southern experience (that I won't give away here) with such poise and grace. It's also up for the Southern book award for nonfiction! Just read it and, if you like to, check out her other books."—Zoe Yarborough, StyleBlueprint

"[An] honest look at a complicated and important relationship. . . . That sense of investigation between writer and reader makes Child a remarkable achievement."—North Carolina Literary Review
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content: 2023 Southern Book Prize Nonfiction Finalist • A 2022 Katie Couric Media Must-Read New Book • A personal meditation on love in the shadow of white privilege and racism

Child is the story of Judy Goldman's relationship with Mattie Culp, the Black woman who worked for her family as a live-in maid and helped raise her—the unconscionable scaffolding on which the relationship was built and the deep love. It is also the story of Mattie's child, who was left behind to be raised by someone else. Judy, now eighty, cross-examines what it was to be a privileged white child in the Jim Crow South, how a bond can evolve in and out of step with a changing world, and whether we can ever tell the whole truth, even to ourselves. It is an incandescent book of small moments, heart-warming, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, Cultural Studies & Sociology, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, Jewish Studies,
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custom_byline1: Matthew A. Shipe
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custom_author_blurb:Matthew A. Shipe is a senior lecturer and director of advanced writing in the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the editor, with Scott Dill, of Updike and Politics: New Considerations, and his work has appeared in Philip Roth Studies, The John Updike Review, and numerous edited collections. He is president of the Philip Roth Society and serves on the executive board of the John Updike Society.
custom_reviews:"Never has there been a greater need for a brisk, open-minded exploration as to why Philip Roth matters. A first-rate survey of contemporary American literature's most astute and provocative novelist"—Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University

"Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth pushes our understanding of Roth further, incorporating Roth's personal history with American life and trauma through original and stylized fictions matched by formal inventiveness. With concision, example and detail, Shipe shows how and why it matters."—Ira Nadel, author of Philip Roth: A Counterlife

"Matthew Shipe has done something extraordinary, rendering the breadth of Philip Roth's oeuvre in a mere 120 pages. Even more astonishing, his critical study is both accessible and sophisticated; bright undergraduates, along with seasoned Roth scholars, will be engaged. This is an important and deft introduction to one of the major writers and voices of our time."—James Schiff, University of Cincinnati

"Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth engages the key word—'understanding'—in two distinctive ways: by helping readers understand the author and by revealing Roth's own understanding of such important contemporary issues as the role of the writer, the vagaries of history, the origins of the American project, and the pleasure and pain at the heart of the human condition."—Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University, co-executive editor of Philip Roth Studies

"Understanding Philip Roth arrives just in time and in usefully succinct form to help readers consider Roth and hisoeuvre as he/it appear within their many significant contexts"—Choice Reviews
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content: A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated—and controversial—authors of the twentieth century

Philip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.

Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment—these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.
categories: Southern History, paperback, Books, Travelogue & Essays,
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custom_subtitle:The WPA Guide to Its Towns and Countryside
custom_byline1: introduction by Phinizy Spalding
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custom_author_blurb:Phinizy Spalding, a native Georgian, is a trained American Colonial Historian whose scholarly work on James Oglethorpe has attracted widespread attention in the field. Spalding has taught history at the University of Georgia since 1966 and has published widely in the general field of Georgia history. He edited the state's historical journal, the Georgia Historical Quarterly, from 1973–80 as the successor of E. Merton Coulter, and has held important positions in the state's premiere historic preservation organization as well. In the final analysis, Spalding is probably as well qualified as any, bearing in mind his long experience and demonstrated affection for the state, to introduce this American Guide Series volume reprint.
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content: Originally published almost fifty years ago as part of the Federal Writers' Program, a division of the Works Progress Administration, this book is a reprint of the original WPA guide for Georgia. Divided into four sections, the general background, cities, tours, and appendices, the book features 17 essays on a variety of topics from Georgia's natural setting and resources to its architecture and sporta and recreation. Detailed descriptions of the state's six major cities—Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Savannah—are also included, and there are 17 remarkably detailed guided tours to all sections of the state as well. In addition to the original chapters, Phinizy Spalding has written a new introduction and a new appendix.
categories: Southern History, Reconstruction Era, Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books,
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custom_subtitle:One Family's Journey from Slavery to Freedom
custom_byline1: Elizabeth J. West
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custom_author_blurb:Elizabeth J. West is the John B. and Elena Diaz-Verson Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters and the Co-Director of Academics of the Center for Studies on Africa and Its Diaspora at Georgia State University. She is the author of African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction and coeditor of Literary Expressions of African Spirituality.
custom_reviews:"West deftly mines the archives of our lives in this moving tribute to her mother's paternal lineage six generations removed. In discovering Frances Sistrunk, West not only recovers the remnants of a resilient and familial legacy, she unearths the inextricable linkages between a living and buried past that refuses to stay silent. In this sojourn, West poetically discovers herself, and reveals to us all the ways oral histories, archives, legal and journalistic documents become a beautiful and painful tapestry of self-discovery, and a cultural map to a fuller view of American, African American, and human history that one must "find" and honor."—Dr. Carol E. Henderson, Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, Emory University

"Finding Francis is an interdisciplinary, multimedia study that demonstrates the innovation of the African Diaspora to preserve and verify its histories. It adds to the growing body of scholarship that recenters the interiority of Black lives from enslavement to freedom. . .This book bears witness to a movement among black scholars to hold space for the voices who could not tell their own stories and those that the written word has neglected. A valuable contribution to Africana Studies, undoubtedly."—Kameela Martin, Dean, Graduate School of the University of Charleston, director of African American Studies and professor of African American Studies and English, College of Charleston
custom_awards:Winner of the 2023 College Language Association Book Award
content: Winner of the 2023 College Language Association Book Award

Finding Francis, finding family, freeing history

Francis is found. Beyond Francis, a family is found—in archival material that barely deigned to notice their existence. This is the story of Francis Sistrunk and her children, from enslavement into forced migration across South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. It spans decades before the Civil War and continues into post-emancipation America. A family story full of twists and turns, Finding Francis reclaims and honors those women who played an essential role in the historical survival and triumph of Black people during and after American slavery.

Elizabeth West has created a remarkable "biohistoriography" of everyday Black resistance, grounded in a determination to maintain enduring connections of family, kinship, and community despite the inhumanity and rapacity of slavery. There is inevitable heartbreak in these histories, but there is also an empowering strength and inspiration—the truth of these lives will indeed set us all free.
categories: Southern History, U.S. History, American Revolution, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_byline1: edited by Walter Edgar
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custom_author_blurb:Walter Edgar is the Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina.
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content: Paul Revere's midnight ride; the Battles at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; and the people and places associated with the early days of the American Revolution hold a special place in America's collective memory. Often lost in this narrative is the pivotal role that South Carolina played in the Revolutionary conflict, especially when the war moved south after 1780. Drawing upon the entries in the award-winning South Carolina Encyclopedia, this volume shines a light on the central role South Carolina played in the story of American independence.

During the war, more than 200 battles and skirmishes were fought in South Carolina, more than any other state. The battles of Ninety Six, Cowpens, Charleston Harbor, among others, helped to shape the course of the war and are detailed here. It also includes well-known leaders and lesser-known figures who contributed to the course of American history. As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, this volume serves as a reminder of the trials and sacrifice that were required to make a new nation.
categories: Art & Photography, Gift Ideas, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Travelogue & Essays, Education Policy & History,
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Pages: 116
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custom_byline1: Chris Horn
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custom_author_blurb:Chris Horn is the director of editorial projects in the University of South Carolina's Communications and Public Affairs Division and host/producer of Remembering the Days, a podcast about the university's history.
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content: A vivid portrait of one of the South's most beautiful college campuses

Chartered in 1801 and built upon a twenty-four-acre parcel of undeveloped land east of what is today the South Carolina State House, in Columbia, the University of South Carolina has expanded beyond the boundaries of its original campus, the historic Horseshoe, to become a vibrant and multifaceted urban research university. Throughout its history, South Carolina's flagship university has created opportunity and knowledge, educated hundreds of thousands of students, and enriched the cultural and social lives of countless community members and supporters throughout the state.

University of South Carolina in Focus celebrates the beauty of its campus architecture and the university's commitment to academic and research excellence, unparalleled student experience, and the thrilling Gamecock sports that fans cheer throughout the year. Enjoy this colorful "walk" across campus and experience one of America's most beautiful universities. Whether you are a current student, an alumnus, or a faithful Gamecock fan, this stunning keepsake will bring your treasured memories of Carolina into focus.
categories: Southern History, Cultural Studies & Sociology, paperback, ebook, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860
custom_byline1: Eugene D. Genovese
custom_byline2: foreword by Douglas Ambrose
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custom_author_blurb:Eugene D. Genovese (1930–2012) was Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the University Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1975 for Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made.
custom_reviews:"Genovese subjects the contradictions of conservative proslavery thought to a respectful if withering critique."—American Historical Review

"This study, based on unparalleled familiarity with the writings of antebellum southern thinkers, has much to tell us about topics that have long interested historians: the slaveholders' world view, its relationship to that of Americans (and Westerners) in general, and the persistent question of southern distinctiveness."—The Journal of American History

"Genovese lays bare the contradictions of the proslavery argument. Contrary to southern claims, free labor produced greater material progress. Slaveholders inconsistently pictured the North as powerful and aggressive, and in the next breath, maintained that the social system of the North was collapsing. By taking seriously the work of southern political theorists, economists, and theologians, Genovese offers penetrating insights into the world view of slaveholders. His study deserves a wide audience."—The Journal of the Early Republic

"With The Slaveholders' Dilemma, Eugene Genovese reminds us once again why he is both the most influential and the most controversial southern historian of his generation. No modern scholar has succeeded in writing with empathy about both slaves and slaveholders as well as Genovese, and this slender volume offers a cogent and forceful statement of Genovese's most recent thinking on what he considers the distinctive conservatism of the Old South."—Reviews in American History
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content: In The Slaveholders' Dilemma, Eugene D. Genovese explores the efforts of American slaveholders to reconcile the intellectual dilemma in which they found themselves as supporters of freedom but defenders of slavery. In the American South slaveholders perceived themselves as thoroughly modern, moral men who protected human progress against the perversions of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Surprisingly, they also accepted the widespread idea that freedom generated the economic, social, and moral progress they embraced as their own cause. Nonetheless, they continued to defend slavery. In this compact but densely argued volume, Genovese rehearses the central arguments that would define the latter portion of his career, thus offering a window not only into the mind of the master class but also the mind of one of the most important scholars of the American South.

A new foreword is provided by Douglas Ambrose, professor of history at Hamilton College and author of Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South.
categories: Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:Coming of Age in the Jim Crow South
custom_byline1: Ruth R. Martin
custom_byline2: with Vivian B. Martin
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custom_author_blurb:Ruth R. Martin is professor emerita and former associate dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut.

Vivian B. Martin is professor and chair of the Journalism Department at Central Connecticut State University.
custom_reviews:"Too often our stories about Black America, and the Black South in particular, focus on slavery, segregation, and post–civil rights politics. In Beatrice's Ledger, Ruth R. Martin chronicles the beautiful, complex, and steadfast Black living that has happened between and beyond those moments in our history. Her portrait of Smoaks, South Carolina, recalls Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God for its description of memorable characters and cultural rituals, of enduring communal connection to the land and spirit. And like Hurston's classic, Beatrice's Ledger gives us a heroine whose journey from the South Carolina Lowcountry to points all around the world inspires our own quests for self-discovery and a sense of home."—Angela Ards, author of Words of Witness: Black Women's Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era

"The spunky daughter of a hard-working family, Martin offers a lyrical accounting of everyday life in the rural South of the mid-twentieth century, including the fraught intimacies and etiquette of racial interaction. Her memoir is a valuable addition to the first-person record of Black resilience and achievement during the Jim Crow years."—Jennifer Ritterhouse, author of Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race

"Beatrice's Ledger is a gift to historians and general readers who yearn for a firsthand account of the Lowcountry during a time that is now remote and yet exists within the framework of the lived experience of someone still with us. It is a pleasure to read and the place—and its citizens—truly come alive in Martin's careful reconstruction."—Rachel Devlin, author of A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools
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content: A vivid and moving story about family, courage, and the power of education

Ruth remembers the day the sheriff pulled up in front of her family's home with a white neighbor who claimed Ruth's father owed her recently deceased husband money. It was the early 1940s in Jim Crow South Carolina, and even at the age of eleven, Ruth knew a Black person's word wasn't trusted. But her father remained calm as he waited on her mother's return from the house. Ruth's mother had retrieved a gray book, which she opened and handed to the sheriff. Satisfied by what he saw, the sheriff and the woman left. Ruth didn't know what was in that book, but she knew it was important.

In Beatrice's Ledger, Ruth R. Martin brings to life the stories behind her mother's entries in that well-worn ledger, from financial transactions to important details about her family's daily struggle to survive in Smoaks, South Carolina, a small town sixty miles outside of Charleston. Once the land of plantations, slavery, and cotton, by the time Ruth was born in 1930 many of the plantations were gone but the cotton remained. Ruth's family made a living working the land, and her father owned a local grist and sawmill used by Black and white residents in the area. The family worked hard, but life was often difficult, and Ruth offers rich descriptions of the sometimes-perilous existence of a Black family living in rural South Carolina at mid-century.

But there was joy as well as hardship, and readers will be drawn into the story of life in Smoaks. Enriched with public records research and interviews with friends and family still living in Smoaks, Martin weaves history, humor, and family lore into a compelling narrative about coming of age as a Black woman in the Jim Crow South. Martin recounts her journey from Smoaks to Tuskegee Institute and beyond. It is a story about the power of family; about the importance of the people we meet along the way; and about the place we call home.
categories: Civil War, paperback, ebook, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_byline1: Marion B. Lucas
custom_byline2: foreword by Anne Sarah Rubin
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custom_author_blurb:Marion B. Lucas is University Distinguished Professor of history at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.
custom_reviews:"This splendid little volume should put to rest forever the question of who burned the capital city of South Carolina."—Civil War History

"Well worthy of examination by all interested in the nature of war and the social, political, and economic ramifications of total warfare. Professor Lucas is to be commended for a very worthy research achievement."—Journal of Southern History

"For a few South Carolinians, this little book will generate more heat than anything Mother Nature can do this summer. . . It is doubtful Lucas' book will ever shut down the debate over the burning of Columbia. History spawns passionate debate around here, as we've heard all year. But at least those who read it carefully should benefit from a little more balanced historical background."—The State

"deals with one of the most difficult, most delicate issues of the Civil War and deals with it in an honest, unbiased manner."—Midlands Weekend

"The results of his efforts are eminently satisfying. He brings order out of contradiction and confusion by carefully weighing the evidence and presenting the results of his study in a simple, straightforward, and interesting manner."—McCormick Messenger
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content: An investigation into who burned South Carolina's capital in 1865

Who burned South Carolina's capital city on February 17, 1865? Even before the embers had finished smoldering, Confederates and Federals accused each other of starting the blaze, igniting a controversy that has raged for more than a century. Marion B. Lucas sifts through official reports, newspapers, and eyewitness accounts, and the evidence he amasses debunks many of the myths surrounding the tragedy.

Rather than writing a melodrama with clear heroes and villains, Lucas tells a more complex and more human story that details the fear, confusion, and disorder that accompanied the end of a brutal war. Lucas traces the damage not to a single blaze but to a series of fires—preceded by an equally unfortunate series of military and civilian blunders—that included the burning of cotton bales by fleeing Confederate soldiers.

This edition includes a new foreword by Anne Sarah Rubin, professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and America.