categories: Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books, Special Sale, 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: Southern History, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies & Sociology, Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World, paperback, ebook, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, New in Paperback,
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Pages: 432
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custom_subtitle:The Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina
custom_byline1: Bertrand Van Ruymbeke
custom_byline2: foreword by Owen Stanwood
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custom_author_blurb:Bertrand Van Ruymbekeis a professor of American civilization at the Universitè de Vincennes-Saint-Denis (Paris VIII). He is the coeditor ofMemory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diasporaand has published in the fields of Huguenot history, early American history, and Atlantic history.
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content: A revealing account of the choices French immigrants faced as they settled in South Carolina

Winner of the National Huguenot Society's 2007 Book of the Year award,From New Babylon to Edentraces the persecution of Huguenots in France and the eventual immigration of a small bloc of the French Calvinist population to proprietary South Carolina. Placing the Carolina migration in the context of the larger Huguenot diaspora, Van Ruymbeke proffers an account that challenges accepted history. Describing their settlement as a process of acculturation and creolization rather than simply assimilation, he contends that most of these French Calvinists sought to create their own churches but were thwarted by an Anglicized elite eager to dominate Anglo-Carolinian society. He also reveals that most members of the initial generation were only moderately prosperous and that it was their descendants who acquired the wealth often associated with lowcountry Huguenots. A new foreword by Owen Stanwood and preface from the author consider the continuing significance of the book nearly twenty years after its original publication.
categories: Literary Studies, Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, Books, New in Paperback, Health, Medicine & Psychology,
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Pages: 220
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: Andrew Farah
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custom_author_blurb:Andrew Farah, MD, practices integrative psychiatry in the Triad of North Carolina and frequently consults on forensic matters. A graduate of the Medical University of South Carolina, Farah completed his residency at Wake Forest University. He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 2014.
custom_reviews:"Farah's book goes [deep], mixing biography, literature, and medical analysis."—Washington Post

"Hemingway's Brain is essential reading."—Hemingway Review

"Addictively readable, intensively researched, and organized around an expert's corrective diagnosis of Hemingway's psychological states and their causes, this is an indispensable resource."—Wendy Stallard Flory, author of The American Ezra Pound
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content: A forensic psychiatrist's corrective and innovative diagnosis of the conditions that led to Ernest Hemingway's suicide

Hemingway's Brain is the first forensic psychiatric examination of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway. Andrew Farah argues that, despite popular mythology, the writer did not have "manic-depressive" disorder, and his alcohol abuse and characteristic narcissism were indicators of a wholly different pathology. Assessing biographies, letters, memoirs of friends and family, and even Hemingway's FBI file, Farah has crafted a uniquely compelling narrative of Hemingway's illness.

Throughout Hemingway's Brain, Farah explores the genetic influences, traumatic brain injuries, and neurological and psychological forces that resulted in what many have described as Hemingway's tortured final years. The paperback edition includes a new preface from the author and updates to the text reflecting the latest scientific advances in the study, prevention, and treatment of traumatic brain injuries.
categories: Children's Literature, Reference & Guides, ebook, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, spiral bound, Open Access Ebook,
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Pages: 52
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custom_byline1: edited by Austin Crane, Michael Mewborne, and Jory Fleming
custom_byline2: illustrated by Elbie Bentley
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custom_author_blurb:Austin Crane holds a PhD in Geography at the University of Washington and is an instructor in the department of geography at the University of South Carolina. He is a broadly trained human geographer, with research interests including political geography, migration and borders, and poverty and inequality.

Michael Mewborne is the director of the South Carolina Geographic Alliance. He earned his Master of Arts in Teaching at the University of South Carolina and later taught World Geography and Advanced Placement Human Geography at Chapin High School in Chapin, South Carolina, and River Bluff High School in Lexington, South Carolina.

Jory Fleming is a climate scientist and educator. He is a Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar, holding an MPhil in environmental change and management from the University of Oxford (Worcester College), an MBA from the Quantic School of Business & Technology, and a BS in geography and marine science from the University of South Carolina.
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content: A rich visual illustration of South Carolina's physical, political, social, and cultural geography

What is the regional distribution of South Carolinians' preferred barbeque sauces? Where were colonial roads located, and how did they relate to the sites of Revolutionary War battles? Where were the key locales of protest during the civil rights movement? When is South Carolina's tornado season and where have tornadoes struck most frequently? Oering more than fty full-color maps, the third edition of the Atlas of South Carolina provides answers to all these questions and more, illustrating the diverse physical, cultural, political, and historical landscapes of the Palmetto State. The Atlas of South Carolina helps readers of all ages better understand the state in which they live.
categories: Southern History, First Cookbooks of America, hardcover, Books, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:200th Anniversary Edition
custom_byline1: Mary Randolph
custom_byline2: with commentary by Karen Hess
foreword by Debra Freeman
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custom_author_blurb:Mary Randolph (1762–1828) published The Virginia House-wife in 1824. Karen Hess (1918–2007) was an accomplished culinary historian and author and editor of numerous books, including The Carolina Rice Kitchen (reissued 2022, USC Press). She was once called "the best American cook in Paris" by Newsweek. Debra Freeman is host and creator of the IACP award-winning podcast,Setting the Table; executive producer and host of the documentary series, Finding Edna Lewis; and food editor for Style Weeklyin Richmond, Virginia.
custom_reviews:"An incredible snapshot of dining and Southern life before the Civil War."—Debra Freeman, from the foreword

"For those interested in history and cooking, [. . .] one of the earliest cookbooks written by an American about the food of this country."—Southern Living

"To mark the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife, the University of South Carolina Press has issued a new edition of Karen Hess's authoritative collated text of the first three editions. The founding book of southern cookery (the first to mingle African American, Native, and European dishes), it reflected both the taste of Thomas Jefferson, with whom Randolph had a familial connection, and that of the Virginia public whom Randolph served as a boardinghouse keeper. The first classic of American regional cookery."—David S. Shields, coauthor of The Ark of Taste: Delicious and Distinctive Foods That Define the United States and Taste the State: South Carolina's Signature Foods, Recipes & Their Stories
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content: The 200-year-old cookbook every modern food lover needs

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Mary Randolph—who was among Thomas Jefferson's extended family—and her husband, US Marshall David Meade Randolph, were celebrated for their lavish hospitality. However, in 1802, Mr. Randolph was removed from office, precipitating a financial downturn. By 1808, Mrs. Randolph opened a boardinghouse, where, by all accounts, the food and accommodations were splendid. In the years that followed, she committed her culinary expertise to paper, publishing The Virginia House-wife in 1824. It has come to be regarded as the most influential American cookbook of the nineteenth century.

This unique edition includes a complete facsimile of the original book—with recipes for delicacies such as lobster sauce and pumpkin pudding, and household tips on such things as curing bacon and making lavender water—plus additional recipes from the 1825 and 1828 editions. Historical notes by culinary historian Karen Hess explain Mary Randolph's influence on American culinary history, and a new foreword by Debra Freeman emphasizes contributions of the free and enslaved African American cooks on American cuisine.
categories: Cultural Studies & Sociology, paperback, ebook, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Travelogue & Essays, Open Access Ebook, Carolina Currents,
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custom_subtitle:Volume 2. Recovering Lost Stories
custom_byline1: edited by Christopher D. Johnson
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custom_author_blurb:Christopher D. Johnson is professor of English and Trustees' Research Scholar at Francis Marion University. He has published more than one hundred books, essays, and reviews.
custom_reviews:"Carolina Currents is a welcome addition to the cultural conversations of South Carolina—inclusive, diverse, incisive, overarching."—John Lane, author of The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph
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content: From the Piedmont to the Lowcountry, South Carolina is the site of countless engaging stories. The contributors to Carolina Currents share those stories, broadening our understanding of the state's unique and diverse histories and cultures. A venue for public-facing interdisciplinary scholarship, each volume presents a collection of essays that illuminates the complex interactions between the state's past and present.

Essays in volume 2 cover topics including the Universities Studying Slavery project, the civil rights movement in South Carolina, and Asian immigrants in the Upstate; a review essay discusses recent work by South Carolina poets.
categories: Southern History, Maritime History, paperback, Books, New in Paperback,
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Pages: 376
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custom_subtitle:With a New Preface
custom_byline1: John S. Sledge
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custom_author_blurb:John S. Sledge is maritime historian in residence for the National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico. He is the author of eight books, including The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History.
custom_reviews:"[An] exciting narrative told by a master of the material and the moment."—Alabama Review

"The book is military history, maritime history, a history of commerce, immigration and race relations, even agriculture. [One] comes away with a hugely enlarged appreciation for the dangers the river presents and with a new awareness of the complexity in the history of Alabama's Port City."—Alabama Public Radio

"An eye-opening introduction to the waterways and people that have written the history of this underappreciated region of the United States."—Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

"A fine, fascinating book. John S. Sledge introduces us to four centuries worth of heroes and rogues on one incredible American river."—Winston Groom

"This book is a must for those thirsty for knowledge."—Idgie

"Who would imagine a river only 45 miles long could encompass such a rich past - a 13th-century Mississippian chiefdom, a French-colonial counterpart to English Jamestown, the last ship carrying enslaved Africans to the US? In his evocative and well-written saga, John Sledge brilliantly explores the myriad ways human history has entwined with the Mobile River."—Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814

"We think of rivers as natural phenomena, but as John Sledge shows, the rivers we know by name and experience are human inventions. Brimming with anecdotes, 'The Mobile River' is an eye-opening introduction to the waterways and people that have written the history of this underappreciated region of the United States."—Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

"The Mobile River is the latest affirmation of John Sledge's extraordinary talent as a historical researcher and author. In this masterful, exquisitely crafted work, he takes us along and underneath the Mobile River and inland as well as he weaves his compelling narrative of over 300 years of our region's rich history. This book promises to be the definitive work on this topic."—David E. Alsobrook, director, History Museum of Mobile
custom_awards:2016 Clinton Jackson Coley Book Award
content: Winner of the Clinton Jackson Coley Book Award from the Alabama Historical Association

In the first-ever narrative history of this important American watercourse, John S. Sledge weaves chronological and thematic elements together with personal experiences for a rich and rewarding read. Illustrated with more than sixty color and black-and-white images, The Mobile River beautifully communicates a strong sense of place.

Beginning at Nannahubba, where the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers meet, the Mobile River serves as the outlet for the sixth largest river basin in the United States and the largest one emptying into the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi. Sledge takes readers on a journey through history framed and sometimes directed by this expansive watershed. A tale spanning colonial forts, international treaties, and thundering naval battles, and populated by characters, including Indian warriors, European diplomats, cartographers, enslaved Africans, Civil War generals, hydraulic engineers, and "Rosie the Riveter" women workers, The Mobile River presents a pageant of conflict, struggle, and endless opportunity. In a new preface, Sledge addresses the 2018 discovery of the wreck of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to arrive in America.
categories: Southern History, Political Science, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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Pages: 318
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custom_subtitle:The Rise of Judicial Elections in the Antebellum South
custom_byline1: David M. Gold
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custom_author_blurb:David M. Gold is an attorney who retired from the Ohio Legislative Service Commission in 2016. He is the author of numerous books on legal and political history, including Democracy in Session and The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney.
custom_reviews:"Democracy and the Courts is current as well as pathbreaking. Focusing on fifteen southern and border states, Gold reviews the emergence of judicial elections and demolishes the conventional explanation that the adoption of judicial elections was designed to further the adoption of judicial review."—Steven H. Steinglass, dean emeritus and professor emeritus, Cleveland State University College of Law

"While others have written on the rise of judicial elections in the Jacksonian Era South in pieces, no one has brought together these pieces as a unified whole until Gold."—Charles Zeldon, Nova Southeastern University, author of Bush v. Gore

"Scholars should carefully note Gold's lucid, persuasive argument that the shift to an elective judiciary in the South reflected a commitment to democracy rather than a desire to buttress judicial review."—Michael Les Benedict, professor emeritus, The Ohio State University
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content: The first comprehensive examination of the development of judicial elections in the American South

The practice of choosing state judges by popular election is a unique aspect of American democracy. First appearing in Mississippi in 1832 and then sweeping across the United States, judicial elections had a distinctly Southern origin. Prior scholarship seeking to explain the broad acceptance of the elected judiciary mainly relied on the records of Northern-state constitutional conventions. In Democracy and the Courts, David M. Gold offers the first comprehensive exploration of the advent of this often-controversial democratic reform in the nineteenth-century American South.

Making intensive use of primary sources, such as constitutional-convention proceedings, legislative journals, and newspapers, Gold explores the various paths taken by Southern states toward the elective judiciary and the reasons why some states accepted judicial elections only partially or rejected them altogether. He considers the effect of judicial elections on judicial review before the Civil War and looks to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, assessing the final and ironic triumph of the elective judiciary during the decidedly undemocratic Jim Crow era.
categories: Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, South Carolina History & Culture, Education Policy & History,
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Pages: 224
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custom_subtitle:An African American Woman's Journey for Justice
custom_byline1: Henrie Monteith Treadwell
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custom_author_blurb:Henrie Monteith Treadwell was the first African American woman to attend and graduate from the University of South Carolina. She later earned a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Atlanta University. She was program director for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and is a world-renowned public health expert affiliated with the Morehouse School of Medicine.
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content: The first Black woman graduate of the University of South Carolina recounts a life of activism and service

Come Along with Me is a compelling memoir of resilience, activism, and breaking barriers in the causes of health equity and social justice. Henrie Monteith Treadwell recounts her personal and legal struggles to become the first African American student admitted to the University of South Carolina since Reconstruction, a pivotal moment in civil rights history. More than a personal narrative, the book is a call to action, inspiring young people of color—especially women—to push forward against systemic injustices.

Through reflections on her experiences and accomplishments in health advocacy, policy reform, and social justice, Treadwell highlights the continued struggles for racial and gender equity in higher education, health care, and beyond. In Come Along with Me, Treadwell underscores the importance of acknowledging historical injustices while actively working toward a more inclusive and just society.For anyone committed to change—whether in education, health care, philanthropy, or public policy—these pages provide rich evidence that progress is possible when individuals challenge barriers, demand justice, and open doors for future generations. Treadwell's memoir is a testament to the power of perseverance and the necessity of collective action in shaping a better world.

Published in cooperation with the University of South Carolina Division of Access, Civil Rights, and Community Engagement.
categories: Southern History, Civil War, Military History, Memoir & Biography, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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Pages: 432
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custom_subtitle:Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson at War and Peace
custom_byline1: Edward J. Hagerty
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custom_author_blurb:Edward J. Hagerty teaches history at American Military University and Leadership classes at the Air Force Global College. He is author of Collis' Zouaves: The 114th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Civil War and The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, 1948-2000.
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content: Military biography of Lt. Gen. Richard H. Anderson, whose career led him from West Point to Mexico, Charleston to Appomattox

Soldier of the South is the first comprehensive examination of Anderson's life, providing a view of an officer's experiences on the frontier, in Mexico, and during the American Civil War. Anderson led Confederate soldiers first in Florida, then from the Peninsula Campaign to Sailor's Creek, where his patchwork corps disintegrated. Edward J. Hagerty considers both the strategic details of Anderson's failures and successes on the battlefield and his personal struggles off it. One of Robert E. Lee's corps commanders, Anderson was the most senior ranking soldier from South Carolina, yet he fell into relative obscurity after the war. Hagerty examines the causes for Anderson's postwar decline and makes the case for his continued significance.
categories: Outdoors & Nature, Art & Photography, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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Pages: 192
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custom_subtitle:A Photographic Journey
custom_byline1: photographs by Robert C. Clark
custom_byline2: text by Tom Poland
foreword by Mary Alice Monroe
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custom_author_blurb:A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Robert C. Clark's photographs have appeared in his own books, National Geographic books, Newsweek, and Smithsonian Magazine, among other publications, as well as in photographic awards annuals such as Print and Communications Arts. He has photographed seven books on South Carolina and is a member of the Professional Photographers of America (PPA). Clark lives in Irmo, South Carolina.

Tom Poland is an award-winning writer and recipient of the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina's highest civilian honor. His career includes publishing books and a weekly column, magazine writing and editorship, filmmaking, and photography. Poland's speaking engagements about the South, its people, culture, and natural features are held throughout Georgia and the Carolinas. A Georgia native and graduate of the University of Georgia, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
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content: A luminous visual survey of South Carolina's splendor

From the Appalachians to the Atlantic, scenes of South Carolina's awe-inspiring beauty shine in South Carolina Reflections: A Photographic Journey — a stirring visual tribute to one of America's most varied landscapes and favorite destinations.

The culmination of photographer Robert C. Clark and writer Tom Poland's three-decade collaboration, which includes the two classic Relfections of South Carolina volumes, this keepsake book offers new, comprehensive coverage of the entire state in a single volume. Clark and Poland present the geological grandeur, natural beauty, and cultural diversity the Palmetto State boasts across its 32,000 square miles. Rich with more than fifty new photographs — 147 stunning color images in all — South Carolina Reflections stands as a fresh, frame-worthy gallery, highlighting South Carolina's allure. Few see South Carolina as Clark and Poland do.

Their words and photographs capture a landscape abundant with captivating rivers, lakes, surf, and vistas, and overflowing with flora and fauna. During their travels to discover and document the state's beauty, the pair uncovered charming country stores, water-powered gristmills, enchanting meadows, and extraordinary people and places. From angles high and low, the photographs illuminate the state's craggy summits, blackwater swamps, cascading waterfalls, and remote islands. The foreword by New York Times best-selling author Mary Alice Monroe complements the text and images.

For visitors to the state and especially for generations of proud South Carolinians, South Carolina Reflections is a treasurable gift and timeless portrait of the wonders of the Palmetto State.
categories: Southern History, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Native American Studies,
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Pages: 392
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custom_subtitle:Virginia Colonialism into Native Country, 1670–1776
custom_byline1: Anthony S. Parent Jr.
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custom_author_blurb:Anthony S. Parent Jr. is professor emeritus of history, African American Studies, and American ethnic studies at Wake Forest University.
custom_reviews:"This stunning book is the crowning achievement of a leading colonial historian. Anthony S. Parent Jr.'s Flocks of Birds invites history readers to soar over vital, unfamiliar territory."—Peter H. Wood, Duke University, author of Black Majority

"Tracking the ever-shifting alliances and enmities among the kaleidoscopically diverse peoples so scantily summarized as European, African, and Indigenous, Anthony S. Parent Jr. accomplishes the monumental task of conveying all that nuance in a clear and compelling narrative."—Woody Holton, University of South Carolina, author of Liberty Is Sweet

"A worthy synthesis of recent scholarship, Anthony S. Parent Jr.'s Flocks of Birds highlights the importance of Native actors in the colonial period."—Kristalyn Marie Shefveland, Southern Indiana University, author of Anglo-Native Virginia
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content: Centers Indigenous people and voices in the history of the vast expansion of Virginia colonialism into Appalachia

Flocks of Birds is an inclusive and interconnected history of the Virginia colony, one that demonstrates the centrality of Native history to America's colonial history. By delving deep into the primary record, Anthony S. Parent explores the evolving Indigenous response to Virginia colonialism in Native country across three generations, from 1670 to 1776.

As Virginia colonists expanded their settlements west from the Tidewater, they entered a region that was far from uninhabited wilderness. In 1685 more than 100,000 Indigenous people from dozens of nations lived in the Southern Appalachians. These were different groups than the Tsenacomoco (the Powhatan Paramount chiefdom) that colonists had encountered when they established their first permanent settlements along the coast. They included Susquehannock in the north; Shawnee and Seneca-Cayuga (Mingo) in the northwest; Saponi in the west; Tuscarora and Yamasee in the south; and the Ani'-Yun-wiya (Cherokee) in the southwest, among many others. Parent explores the complex interactions amongst and between Indigenous people, European colonists, and enslaved Africans.
categories: Memoir & Biography, Music & Theater, paperback, ebook, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, New in Paperback,
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Pages: 520
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custom_subtitle:The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland, With a New Preface
custom_byline1: Paul de Barros
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custom_author_blurb:Paul de Barros is an award-winning jazz critic and the author of Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle. He has written for DownBeat and The Seattle Times since 1982.
custom_reviews:"This book is, in short, one of the best jazz biographies of the past decade, and it will likely inspire the reader to go back and listen to the subject's albums and radio broadcasts."—JazzTimes

"Throughout, McPartland's openness and de Barros's careful writing create a holistic portrait of one of this century's most important jazz pianists."—DownBeat

"No matter how much anyone thinks they know about Marian's life, Paul de Barros reveals so much information hidden from her fans with his comprehensive exploration of her life and career."—Hot House Jazz Guide
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content: The life of the unparalleled purveyor of the Great American Songbook, Marian McPartland, is celebrated in this engrossing biography

From Bobby Short to Esperanza Spalding, across the 33-year run of the acclaimed radio show Piano Jazz, Marian McPartland conversed and played piano duets with jazz greats and, via National Public Radio syndication, brought the best of jazz standards to listeners. In Shall We Play That One Together?, Paul de Barros considers McPartland's full life and shows her to have been a courageous compositional innovator as well as an immensely talented popularizer and educator. Her standing among jazz artists and her advocacy for women jazz musicians made McPartland a natural to host Piano Jazz show, conceived in 1978, and first broadcast on WLTR out of Columbia, South Carolina, in 1979. That show secured her reputation in the musical form and allowed her to introduce American and then global audiences to a diverse array of musicians developing the Great American Songbook.
categories: Political Science, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture,
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Pages: 144
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custom_byline1: Vincent Sheheen
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custom_author_blurb:Vincent Sheheen is an attorney and former state senator, and was elected Mayor of Camden, SC, in 2024. He has taught at the University of South Carolina Honors College and Joseph F. Rice School of Law as well as the Francis Marion University Non-Profit Institute. Sheheen is cohost of the podcast Bourbon in the Back Room and has published numerous essays, articles, and the book, The Right Way: Getting the Palmetto State Back on Track.
custom_reviews:"A student of state history and politics, Senator Sheheen chronicles the good, the bad, the sublime, and the ridiculous across our state institutions. Drawing on his firsthand expertise, he adds insights distinctly missing (or conspicuously omitted) from earlier writing on this subject."—Dr. Luther F. Carter, president, Francis Marion University
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content: An insider's guide to the government of the Palmetto State

In The Concise Guide to South Carolina State Government, former state senator Vincent Sheheen provides an engaging and accessible overview of the structures of the state's government and how they came to be. Sheheen covers the history of South Carolina's government, the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, state agencies, and local government, with the insight that only someone who has walked the corridors of the State House in Columbia can provide. Throughout, profiles of a key figures such as Solomon Blatt (the first Jewish speaker of the house) and Jean Hoefer Toal (the first woman to serve on the state Supreme Court and as chief justice), animate the text.

For elected officials, government professionals, teachers, students, media on the politics beat, and political junkies, The Concise Guide to South Carolina State Government will become the first place to go to learn about why the Palmetto State works the way it does.
categories: Rhetoric & Communication, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Movement Rhetoric Rhetoric's Movements, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, Queer Studies,
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custom_subtitle:Feminist Rhetorical Methods for Social Change
custom_byline1: edited by Eileen E. Schell, K.J. Rawson, Curtis J. Jewell, Abigail H. Long, Sidney Turner, and Gabriella Wilson
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custom_author_blurb:Eileen E. Schell is professor of writing and rhetoric and Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence at Syracuse University.

K.J. Rawson is professor of English and women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and director of the Humanities Center, at Northeastern University. Schell and Rawson's numerous publications include the coedited volume Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies.

Curtis J. Jewell, Abigail H. Long, Sidney Turner, and Gabriella Wilson, are pursuing doctoral degrees in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program at Syracuse University.
custom_reviews:"Recounts novel and embodied methodologies for pushing the boundaries of feminist scholarly inquiry."—Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Georgia State University, coeditor of Remembering Women Differently
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content: Advancing feminist rhetorical methods for social change

In a world marked by political polarization and racial, sexist, ableist, and class-based injustices, feminist rhetorical research is vital to ongoing struggles for social justice—in communities, in digital spaces, and in classrooms. Rhetorica Rising introduces a range of feminist rhetorical methods and methodologies that can help us understand social justice movements, past and present.

The collection highlights how the field of rhetorical studies has evolved over the past decade, taking up the challenge of creating intersectional feminist scholarship that engages with BlPOC histories and rhetorics, decolonial rhetorics, digital studies, disability studies, queer studies, transnational studies, and discourses regarding reproductive justice.
categories: Rhetoric & Communication, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Open Access Ebook,
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custom_subtitle:The Complete Proceedings of the Clionian Debating Society, 1847–1858
custom_byline1: edited by Angela G. Ray
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custom_author_blurb:Angela G. Ray is associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States.
custom_reviews:"A significant contribution to our understanding of Black freedom in the antebellum South."—John Garrison Marks, author of Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery

"With remarkable insight and care, Free Black Charlestonians in Debate illuminates a vibrant example of nineteenth-century Black intellectual culture and the joy of thinking and learning together."—Carly S. Woods, University of Maryland, author of Debating Women

"Free Black Charlestonians in Debate is an insightful case study of elite free Blacks' vibrant yet frustrated intellectual life and quest for learning and respectability in late antebellum slaveholding Charleston."—Bernard Powers, Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, Professor Emeritus College of Charleston
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content: The comprehensive, never-before-published records of a debating society run by free Black men

From 1847 until 1858, when "political disadvantages" prompted its dissolution, the Clionian Debating Society, a group of young free Black men, met regularly in Charleston, South Carolina. Reconstruction-era leaders such as Henry Cardozo, who would serve in the South Carolina legislature, and Simeon W. Beaird, who was elected to Georgia's state constitutional convention in 1867, were among its membership.

Free Black Charlestonians in Debate brings together the Clionian Society's minutes in a comprehensive scholarly edition, reuniting the two original handwritten volumes that are now housed in the collections of the Charleston Library Society and Duke University. The annotated transcription is supported by an introduction, appendixes summarizing key features of the society's membership and operations, recommendations for further reading, and an index. Made easily accessible for the first time, these minutes represent an important piece of Black intellectual history that offers insight into the educational training of young men of the free Black community in pre-Civil War Charleston.
categories: Southern History, Reconstruction Era, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Reconstruction Reconsidered, Forthcoming, Books, Historic Preservation,
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custom_subtitle:Restoring the History of Emancipation and Citizenship in Yorktown, Virginia, 1861–1940
custom_byline1: Rebecca Capobianco Toy
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custom_author_blurb:Rebecca Capobianco Toy is interpretation and engagement coordinator for the Washington, DC, Office of the National Park Service. She received the National Park Service's Freeman Tilden Interpretation Award, and her work has appeared in Civil War History.
custom_reviews:"Rebecca Capobianco Toy's extensive research and effective use of available source material have combined to produce a work that contributes not only to the scholarship on post-emancipation Virginia and the development of vibrant Black communities across the postwar South but also to broader understandings of the extent to which preservation of certain historical narratives and landscapes can actively contribute to the erasure of others."—Jill Ogline Titus, Civil War Institute, Gettysburg College, author of Gettysburg 1963

"A timely demonstration of the active role that Black Southerners played in shaping the world that emerged after emancipation."—Daniel B. Thorp, Virginia Tech, author of Facing Freedom

"Rebecca Capobianco Toy's Landscapes of Freedom reminds us why so many of the very best works of history focus on particular geographies, finding the complexity of the world in a tightly bound area, in this case York County, Virginia, and the community of 'Slabtown.' A truly fine study that should be read by all nineteenth-century scholars."—Gregory P. Downs, University of California, Davis, author of After Appomattox
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content: Revelations of the profound effect and long legacy of America's post-Civil War Reconstruction

In Landscapes of Freedom, Rebecca Capobianco Toy tells the story of an emblematic community of freedpeople during the Civil War era. Some of the earliest acts of wartime emancipation happened in the Tidewater of Virginia, where enslaved people voted with their feet and escaped the Confederacy by crossing into US Army lines. At Yorktown, Virginia, freedpeople developed their own self-governing enclave near (and in some cases on) the Revolutionary War battlefield. Toy describes that Black community, its formation, and its development well into the twentieth century. She traces the effect of Reconstruction policy and the consequences that its subsequent rollback had on the lives of Black citizens.

Toy also documents the Black community's attempts to commemorate its members' role in the Civil War. The Black community fought to retain that memory, one that challenged not only the Lost Cause interpretation of the war but also the federal government's efforts to privilege the Revolutionary memory of Yorktown while ignoring its ongoing role in the story of American freedom.
categories: Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, New & Noteworthy, Books, Travelogue & Essays, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:Southern Recipes, Saucy Stories, and More Rambunctious Behavior
custom_byline1: Mary Martha Greene
custom_byline2: foreword by Cassandra King
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custom_author_blurb:Mary Martha Greene is a South Carolina native and government relations consultant who perfected her entertaining skills for making friends and engaging clients during her forty-year career. The author of The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All: Southern Recipes, Sweet Remembrances, and a Little Rambunctious Behavior, she divides her time between Beaufort and Columbia, SC.
custom_reviews:"Chef's kiss! Storytelling and meals are a celebratory tradition in the South, and The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic! is a most delightful tribute to Southern comfort food and culture. There's something to savor on every page!"—Kim Michele Richardson, New York Times bestselling author

"Kiss My Aspic! is as warm and welcoming as a surprise basket of treats and a front porch visit with a neighbor. An irresistible mix of cooking, stories, and Southern hospitality, Greene's latest collection is pure joy."—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

"Reading Kiss My Aspic! was like sitting at a table with Mary as we laugh over a meal and a glass of wine. I know this because I've done it. Thank you, Mary, for reminding us about the ways food brings together family, friends, and community."—Natalie Daise, artist, storyteller, and author of Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration

"You know that feeling you have after catching up with a dear old friend, ticking off boxes full of gossip about this and that, and frequently finding your sides in stitches and your eyes gently stinging with tears of laughter? That is exactly how I feel after reading The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic!"—KC Hysmith, PhD, historical editor, When Southern Women Cook

"Kiss my Aspic! is a delightful read as much as a valuable resource for the home cook, filled with practical advice as well as inspirational quotes."—Amy Paige Condon, Savannah Morning News
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content: The Cheese Biscuit Queen returns with signature sass, spirited stories, and 80 new recipes

Queen Mary Martha Greene's ear for stories, heart for telling them, and taste for all the ingredients that whip up a good time whisk together in The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic! Southern Recipes, Saucy Stories, and More Rambunctious Behavior— the memoir, cookbook, and hilarious sequel to her best-selling book The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All. In the new book, Queen Mary Martha invites you into her world of Southern hospitality, blending recipes and tales with just enough spice to make you flutter your hand fan.

Real-life characters sparkle with humor and Southern charm in this rollicking romp through new recipes and stories, including the "Whiskeypalian" sneaking alcohol to his grandmother at her retirement community, and a few favorites like the Queen's champagne mustard recipe origin story. To each pint of levity, she adds an ounce of gravity when she shares memories like her grandmother reminding her that friends are the family you choose.

Organized by course and featuring 80 new recipes, The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic! includes delicious favorites like Shrimp Remoulade Deviled Eggs, Pride of the Pee Dee Chicken Bog, Chocolate Pound Cake with Pecan Fudge Icing, and Chatham Artillery Punch, plus Miss Willa's Cheese Tomato Aspic—that uniquely Southern staple of controversial appeal. Queen Mary Martha sets a place at her table for Southern hospitality newbies, experienced entertainers, and everyone who enjoys food made with love and seasoned with heartfelt stories.

Charmingly illustrated with vintage photographs and with a foreword by Cassandra King, author of Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy, The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic! celebrates food, family, friends, and Southern culture.
categories: Military History, Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, Books,
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custom_subtitle:The Lost Letters of a Fallen Soldier and the Stories of Those He Left Behind
custom_byline1: William S. Walker
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custom_author_blurb:William Walker is a South Carolina–born writer and former soldier who worked as a reporter and editor for more than four decades.
custom_reviews:"A touching homage to a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. A tender, loving account of a short but honorable life."—Kirkus Reviews

"Dearest Mama presents a compelling collection of letters from WWII soldier, Private First-Class Fletcher Blanton, highlighting the profound impact of his absence on his family and friends."—Travis L. Martin, author of War & Homecoming

"There's a story behind every soldier who served during WWII. Thanks to a packet of letters he found in a cobweb-covered cabinet, William S. Walker tells the story of his uncle Bud, who never made it back home."—Tyler Bridges, chief political reporter for the Times-Picayune/The Advocate in New Orleans, author of The Flight
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content: A cache of letters leads to a journey of discovery that reveals the long and lasting consequences of war

William S. Walker never knew his uncle, Fletcher "Bud" Blanton. Blanton had been killed fighting in Europe during World War II before Walker was born. Walker had heard stories about Bud, but for most of his life his uncle had existed only as a faded memory. That path changed when Walker opened a dusty cabinet forgotten in his garage attic and found a paper sack and a note in his father's handwriting that read, "Go through before you throw away." The bag was filled with family photos, correspondence, and a collection of letters and postcards that his uncle Bud had written to his family during his time on the frontline as a US Army infantryman in Europe. The first letter he pulled from the bag opened with the line, "Dearest Mama." Walker's Dearest Mama is Bud Blanton's story. More than that it is a deeply personal family chronicle that resonates for all those left behind when servicemembers do not return home from combat.
categories: Civil War, Civil Rights, Reconstruction Era, ebook, hardcover, Reconstruction Reconsidered, Forthcoming, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, and the Transformation of the GOP
custom_byline1: Tim Galsworthy
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custom_author_blurb:Tim Galsworthy is a lecturer in history and military history at Lincoln Bishop University in Lincoln, United Kingdom.
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content: How the Republican Party transformed from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Lee

The Republican House Divided is the first comprehensive study of the relationships between the Republican Party and Civil War memory in the twentieth century. Tim Galsworthy reveals how rival Republicans deployed Civil War memory to support, oppose, and ultimately shape the GOP's transformation, during the civil rights era, into a racially conservative party. Drawing on extensive archival research, Galsworthy underlines how references to the past were vitally important to Republican Party politicians as they negotiated their party's positions toward African American civil rights and attempted to appeal to erstwhile white Southern Democrats. Paying attention to a range of actors—including national party leaders, southern conservatives, prominent progressives, and defiant Black Republicans—he traces the actions of Republican politicians and operatives from across the party's ideological and geographical spectrums as they struggled to control and direct party messaging, strategy, and policy. The Republican House Divided is a timely work, offering insight into how the "Party of Lincoln" started on the road to becoming the GOP of today.
categories: Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, New & Noteworthy, Books, Women's & Gender Studies,
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custom_subtitle:A Memoir
custom_byline1: Rachel M. Hanson
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custom_author_blurb:Rachel M. Hanson's writing has appeared in literary journals, including Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, and Joyland Magazine. She is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina Asheville.
custom_reviews:"A book about disturbing experiences, related with cleareyed catharsis and memorable prose."—Kirkus Reviews

"A gut-wrenching story of resilience and survival, beautifully anchored through the ferocity of Hanson's attachments to those she loves. Gorgeous, terrifying, impossible to put down."—Tessa Fontaine, author of The Electric Woman and Red Grove: A Novel

"The End of Tennessee reminds me of the perfect pocketknife—sharp, clean, and always ready to save your life or cut you deep."—Leah Hampton, author of F*ckface: And Other Stories

"A shining reckoning of grief, love, abandon, and loss in Appalachia. Whistling like a crack and clear as crystal, I hear [Hanson] from every holler. The End of Tennessee will change you. Hanson is a real-deal gift."—Halle Hill, author of Good Women

"Hanson's memoir, at its core, is an account of her remarkable but often heartbreaking determination [. . .] an account of a woman seeking again and again to find or make metaphorical music amid the relentless difficulty of her circumstances."—Alex McWalters, Mountain Xpress
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content: Southern Review of Books Best Southern Books of August 2024

A haunting memoir of childhood trauma, building a life, and living with wounds that never heal

"Not a year before I ran away from home at seventeen, I stepped out of the house at dusk, still able to see shrub oaks thinned out for winter, fame flower, too, and dun clay so wet the smell of it seemed settled in my skin." So begins Rachel M. Hanson's debut memoir about growing up impoverished, uneducated, and surrounded by violence. In lyrical, fragmented prose, she lays bare the impossible choice between self-preservation and her love for five younger siblings for whom she had become a second mother. As the years pass, Hanson struggles with guilt for leaving her siblings as she slowly realizes she could not save them. The End of Tennessee is a testament to a sister's love, resilience, and determination, a book for anyone who has left one life to create another.
categories: Political Science, Rhetoric & Communication, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf
custom_byline1: Randall Fowler
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custom_author_blurb:Randall Fowler is assistant professor of communication at Abilene Christian University. A former Fulbright scholar, he is author of More Than a Doctrine: The Eisenhower Era in the Middle East and coauthor of Something to Fear: FDR and the Foundations of American Insecurity, 1912–1945.
custom_reviews:"Fowler's cogently written book demonstrates the way evolving metaphors have influenced American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf over the last six decades."—Robert C. Rowland, University of Kansas, author of The Rhetoric of Donald Trump

"Fowler's examination of root metaphors in presidential war rhetoric makes an important contribution to our understanding of how we talk ourselves into war and how we might prevent war."—Paul J. Achter, University of Richmond, whose work has appeared in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Western Journal of Communication, and Critical Studies in Media Communication

"In Securing the Prize, Randall Fowler illuminates how the presidential use of metaphor creates, contains, and constrains US foreign-policy discourse and decision making."—Allison M. Prasch, University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of The World Is Our Stage and coeditor of Foreign Policy Rhetorics in a Global Era
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content: How presidential metaphors have shaped US discourse on the Persian Gulf

From the 1970s to the 1990s American presidents and their advisers introduced four metaphors into foreign-policy discourse that taught Americans to view the Persian Gulf as a vulnerable region and site of US responsibility on the world stage. In Securing the Prize: Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf, Randall Fowler argues that, for half a century, metaphor has been central to defining America's role in the Middle East. Metaphors served as shorthand for presidents to promote their policies, filtering through the judgments of officials, journalists, experts, and critics to mediate American perceptions of the Gulf War. Tracing the use of security metaphors from President Richard Nixon to President George W. Bush, Fowler revises mainstream understandings regarding the origins of the War on Terror and explains the disconnect between skeptical public attitudes toward US involvement in the Gulf War and the heavy American military footprint in the region.
categories: Military History, Memoir & Biography, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, Health, Medicine & Psychology,
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custom_subtitle:A Memoir
custom_byline1: Barbara Presnell
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custom_author_blurb:A lifelong Southerner, Barbara Presnell is the author of two award-winning poetry books, essays, and theatrical performances. Presnell is a senior lecturer emeritus in writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's MFA in Creative Writing program, she has received two NC Arts Council Fellowships and is a resident fellow at Willapa Bay AiR, the Hambidge Center, and the Wildacres Residency program. She lives in Lexington, NC, with her husband, Bill Keesler, and rescue pup, Colby.
custom_reviews:"With heartrending poignancy and powerful prose, Presnell's memoir ping-pongs between her traumatic youth in small-town North Carolina and her family's healing journey. As she and her siblings retrace their late father's steps as a young soldier in 1944–45 Europe, they open doors to reconciliation—on every level."—Holly George-Warren, author of Janis: Her Life and Music

"Otherwise, I'm Fine is a story about connection—how we connect, disconnect, reconnect. Presnell is a gifted and gutsy writer. Her memoir is utterly compelling, full of longing and grace."—Judy Goldman, author of Child: A Memoir

"I have always admired Barbara Presnell's lyrical gifts, and in Otherwise, I'm Fine she has created a memoir, crafting a sacramental relationship with her long-dead father who suffered, fought, and then returned home from World War II's European Theater. Presnell's writing is lucid and full of details. This is a beautiful book."—John Lane, author of Gullies of My People

"Otherwise, I'm Fine follows the intimate journey Presnell undertakes as she recaptures her past, breaks years of silence, and in the process restores her family. It is a powerful testimony that love overcomes grief."—Susan Fox Rogers, author of Learning the Birds: A Midlife Adventure

"A tender family memoir about grief, memory, and reconnection."—Foreword Reviews
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content: A daughter's story of unresolved grief and a family's hard-won healing

When her husband Bill died in 1969, Tina Presnell gathered her three children. "We won't talk about this," she said. "It will be easier that way." Thus began, in the Presnell family, a decades-long period of silence and intense, isolated grieving for this ordinary man.

In 2012, several years after her mother's death, Barbara Presnell recovered her father's World War II belongings: a scrapbook, news clippings, documents, and letters. Recalling how much his war experiences had meant to him, Barbara, along with her estranged brother and sister, planned a journey to travel their father's route through Europe. From Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, to the western bank of the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany, the siblings would follow the movements of their father's division and rediscover his stories, share memories, and renew family bonds.

In Otherwise, I'm Fine, Presnell tells the story of her grief and, across her tour of western Europe, the breakthroughs that released her from recurring depression, resolved her conflicted grief for her mother, and returned her beloved father to her and her siblings as a living memory.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, African American Studies, paperback, Books,
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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. Updated 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: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books,
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custom_byline1: Kevin J. Hayes
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custom_author_blurb:Kevin J. Hayes is professor emeritus of English, University of Central Oklahoma. He is the author of numerous books, including The Future of the Book: Images of Reading in the American Utopian Novel and George Washington, A Life in Books, for which he was awarded the George Washington Prize.
custom_reviews:"A lively, erudite, highly readable study of Hunter S. Thompson's work, public persona, and cultural significance."—Lindsey Banco, University of Saskatchewan, author of Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature

"Kevin J. Hayes' Understanding Hunter S. Thompson is the most up-to-date and accurate assessment of Thompson's work, giving readers a better, fuller understanding of the late journalist and author's writing."—William McKeen, Boston University, author of Outlaw Journalist and Mile Marker Zero
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content: An insightful guide to the life and literary career of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) pushed the boundaries of storytelling. While the writer is most recognized for the genre-bending work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972), in Understanding Hunter S. Thompson, Kevin J. Hayes provides a broad and nuanced analysis of Thompson's multifaceted career and unique literary voice. Following a biographical introduction, Hayes examines the different roles Thompson played throughout his literary career, resulting in a view of his work unlike any previously published biographical or critical study. The ensuing chapters analyze Thompson's work in his capacities as a foreign correspondent, literary critic, New Journalist, gonzo journalist, campaign writer, anthologist, letter writer, and novelist. Hayes draws on previously unrecorded articles, correspondence, and interviews to inform his insightful analysis. Written in an engaging and propulsive style, Understanding Hunter S. Thompson is essential reading for scholars and fans.
categories: Literary Studies, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, South Carolina History & Culture,
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custom_subtitle:Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838–1902
custom_byline1: Mollie Barnes
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custom_author_blurb:Mollie Barnes is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and Vice President of the Margaret Fuller Society. She has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on nineteenth-century women writers.
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content: The lyrical and political power of nineteenth-century women reformers' life writing

Paper Heroines studies the ways women represented their own and one another's lives in their personal diaries and their biographies of their contemporaries. Author Mollie Barnes urges us to read the life writing that emerged from among the relief-work networks of the South Carolina Lowcountry as deeply interconnected. By reading these women writers—Black and white, obscure and well-known—in conversation, Barnes presents entirely new portraits of these nineteenth-century freedom fighters. Like feminist and anti-racist leaders in our own moment, the women in Paper Heroines were often flawed. White women reformers sometimes created tensions, silences, revisions, and erasures within their print-culture networks, obscuring the lives and contributions of Black women. Black women developed counternarratives and counternetworks as they sought to reclaim their own life histories. What emerges from Barnes's exploration of these textual conversations is a story of complicated relationships that reveal the dynamism of women's lives in a place and time that was equally tumultuous and consequential.
categories: Maritime History, U.S. History, Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World, ebook, hardcover, 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

"Port Cities of the Atlantic World: Sea-Facing Histories of the US South would be suitable for inclusion in any academic or local library with a focus on historical or economic development in the Southeastern United States. The book could also be a valuable addition to any special library with a Southern history focus."—Southeastern Librarian

"[These essays] cover an impressive topical range and chronological span while remaining focused, coherent, and connected. [. . .] This collection [. . .] points to several useful paths of inquiry and demonstrates that ports serve as useful categories to write histories of Atlantic connection that remain grounded in specific places."—Journal of Southern History
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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: Memoir & Biography, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, Jewish Studies,
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custom_subtitle:Finding My American Home, A Memoir
custom_byline1: F. K. Clementi
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custom_author_blurb:F. K. Clementi is a writer, public intellectual, and a professor of English and Jewish Studies at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma.
custom_reviews:"An exuberant, incisive memoir of dreaming of and inventing a New York life. Alive with telling detail, incandescent prose, and fresh insights. A richly pleasurable read. NYC lovers will find much to feast on."—PW BookLife Review

"A sparkling and quirky look at life as an immigrant academician."—Kirkus Reviews

"A memoir unlike any I've read before, captivating, even Proustian at times for the rich sensory details offered at every turn. Readers will easily fall into this melancholy, mellifluous account of a woman who sought, and found, the freedom to tell her own story on her own terms."—Tahneer Oksman, author of How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?

"How does a Jewish woman from Rome, Italy make her way to the American South? The route is neither easy nor linear. . .. Yes, parts of Clementi's story are harrowing, but there are also surprising moments of dark humor that leaven her quest to find the place where she can be truly free, in a room of her own. South of My Dreams is an original, empowering story of gumption and survival."—Julie Metz, New York Times bestselling author of Perfection and Eva and Eve

"South of My Dreams is a quirky and unusual addition to the memoir literature from a spunky woman born in Rome, who dreams of living in New York, but winds up teaching at a South Carolina university via Poland, Israel, and Massachusetts. Funny and full of insights only an outsider to America can provide, Clementi traces her life and loves across cultures."—Helen Epstein, author of The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma and Where She Came From
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content: Woman plans, God laughs . . . Woman Persists.

Introducing a new Jewish voice from the South that tells us with humor, panache, and raw frankness her irresistible story of what it means to become an American woman today.

South of My Dreams follows the adventures and misadventures of Fania, a quixotic heroine, who dreamed all her life of making it big in New York City. Growing up in 1970s Italy, Fania felt constrained by a stale environment, corrupt society, and national culture hostile to women's independence. In pursuit of her childhood fantasy, and heavily influenced by Hollywood films, she leaves everything behind to begin her new life in New York, where she thinks her American Dream awaits. Instead, her American nightmare begins. From miraculous breakthroughs to tragic setbacks, Fania's path is marked by an irreparable trauma while also being graced by intense love, faithful friendships, and inspiring mentors.

Through dramatic twists and turns—and to her great surprise—Fania learns the true meaning of the American expression to "go south."

Simultaneously merciless and humorous, F. K. Clementi's memoir is ultimately an inspiring account of a woman's disillusionment and personal rebirth. Entertaining, original, and poetic, South of My Dreams will resonate with all who fight hard for what they want and refuse to put aside their childhood dreams.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, paperback, Books,
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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: Rhetoric & Communication, Cultural Studies & Sociology, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Movement Rhetoric Rhetoric's Movements, New & Noteworthy, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change
custom_byline1: Lisa Ellen Silvestri
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custom_author_blurb:Lisa Ellen Silvestri is the author of Friended at the Front: Social Media in the American Warzone and coeditor of The Western Journal of Communication. She has spoken at the SXSW Festival and the 92nd Street Y. She is associate teaching professor at Pennsylvania State University.
custom_reviews:"Lisa Ellen Silvestri's Peace by Peace is uplifting from start to finish as it reveals the potential of practical wisdom for concocting a brighter future."—Robert L. Ivie, author of Dissent from War

"It will be a great thing if this delightful book comes into your life—like having your wisest aunt over for tea. Peace by Peace has ideas we all need to live a moral life in crisis times."—Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, author of Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It
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content: Eight stories about extraordinary action carried out by ordinary people

When you want to effect positive change against structural and systemic problems, where do you begin? In Peace by Peace Lisa Silvestri uses interview-based storytelling to explore the catalytic moments that led ordinary people to address social, political, and economic issues in their communities ranging from the West Bank to West Baltimore. The source of their audacity is practical wisdom, an Ancient Greek virtue that Silvestri revives for twenty-first century application.

In the face of challenges like environmental exploitation, global conflict, and ongoing fights for social justice, Peace by Peace offers deeply informed insight into how we can move past debilitating cynicism to create actionable change.
categories: Memoir & Biography, African American Studies, ebook, hardcover, New & Noteworthy, 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:"A fascinating excursion into a past that, though relatively recent, has long been hidden from view."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[The Garretts of Columbia] Captures a family with both the rich detail of a biographer and the artistry of a novelist. A remarkable achievement."—Washington Independent Review of Books

"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 Nicolson's richly sourced, interestingly populated veil of color . . . 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

"The Garretts of Columbia, with photographs and excerpts of letters exchanged between family members, is a treasure trove of memories for Garrett descendants to cherish."—The National Genealogical Society Quarterly
custom_awards:2024 Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads pick
2024 Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite Books pick
content: "A fascinating excursion into a past that, though relatively recent, has long been hidden from view."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) • 2024 Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads pick

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, Music & Theater, paperback, Books,
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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, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Women's & Gender Studies,
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Pages: 192
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custom_byline1: N. S. Boone
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custom_author_blurb:N. S. Boone is professor of English at Harding University. His writing has been published in journals, including Renascence, The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies and The Explicator.
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content: The first comprehensive study of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham

Since her first book appeared in 1980, Jorie Graham has challenged readers with her bold, innovative, and capacious poetry. In the collections that followed, she expanded the scope of the lyric form through her maximalist poetics, her provocative ethical imagination, and, in later years, her environmentalist vision. Graham was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Dream of the Unified Field and has served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. As a professor at Harvard University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Graham has mentored and inspired the next generation of poets.

In Understanding Jorie Graham, N. S. Boone situates Graham among post-World War II and contemporary American poets, and he provides a look inside her life and career based on a series of exclusive personal interviews. Boone then traces the development of Graham's themes and style through her collections, providing detailed readings of the most significant poems in Graham's corpus. For scholars, students, and fans of Graham's poetry, the volume provides essential context and insight.
categories: Literary Studies, Understanding Contemporary American Literature, Music & Theater, 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: U.S. History, Reconstruction Era, ebook, hardcover, Reconstruction Reconsidered, Books,
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custom_subtitle:Ulysses S. Grant and a New Empire of Liberty
custom_byline1: Ryan P. Semmes
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custom_author_blurb:Ryan P. Semmes is professor and director of research at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, housed at Mississippi State University.
custom_reviews:"Ryan P. Semmes navigates exciting new departures into the international realm of Reconstruction, while furnishing a superb rehabilitation of Ulysses S. Grant's historical legacy."—Andrew F. Lang, author of A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era, a 2022 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize finalist

"No president has risen farther in rankings by presidential historians than Ulysses S. Grant. Ryan P. Semmes, demonstrating the fruits of his long involvement with the Grant Papers, offers a fresh evaluation of the foreign policy of this Reconstruction President."—Ronald C. White, author of American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

"This ambitious volume illuminates the overarching coherence of Ulysses S. Grant's foreign and domestic policies, making it a compelling reading for courses on the Civil War era, American diplomacy, and Western history."—David Prior, author of Between Freedom and Progress: The Lost World of Reconstruction Politics and editor of Reconstruction and Empire: The Legacies of Abolition and Union Victory for an Imperial Age

"Semmes skillfully uncovers new connections between Grant's Reconstruction policy toward African Americans and his ambition to construct a multiracial, Republican empire across and beyond North America. Highly recommended."—Stacey L. Smith, author of Freedom's Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction
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content: How Reconstruction-era political battles reflected global struggles over the era's core ideals

Exporting Reconstruction examines Ulysses S. Grant's Reconstruction-era policy, both foreign and domestic, as an integrated whole. Grant's vision for America's international role in the aftermath of the Civil War was best articulated in his 1869 memorandum, considering whether the United States should annex the Dominican Republic. Grant envisioned a combined domestic and foreign policy of Reconstruction, one predicated on spreading the values of liberty, equality, and the rights of citizenship to not only the Dominican Republic but also other Caribbean nations as well as to Native Americans and Chinese immigrants living in the United States but seen as aliens within the nation.

Author Ryan P. Semmes interprets the Grant-era policy of Reconstruction as an all-encompassing agenda that imagined the United States as the arbiter of civil rights for the Western Hemisphere. Exporting Reconstruction shows readers that, unlike presidents before and after his administration, Grant hoped to increase not only the United States's imperial reach but also extend freedom and liberty to people beyond the borders of North America.
categories: Southern History, Business & Economics, ebook, hardcover, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Jewish Studies,
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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
custom_awards:2024 George C. Rogers Jr. Award Finalist
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, New & Noteworthy, Books, Jewish Studies, Queer Studies,
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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 the author of the award-winning story collection Fire Year. He lives in San Francisco and Savannah.
custom_reviews:"A revealing prism through which to examine a dark period of American history."—Publishers Weekly

"A thrilling mystery, fearless reimagining, and fresh historical portrait that lives and breathes. I could not put it down. And neither will you."—Andrew Sean Greer, 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner for Less

"By blending memoir, history (through the eyes of place as character), and social commentary, Liberty Street provides a strange and fully compelling bildungsroman."—Jonathan Rabb, author of several novels including Among the Living and other novels

"Written with clarity, intelligence, precision, and a healthy dose of sultry Southern detail."—Aaron Hamburger, author of Hotel Cuba

"Ironically titled, Liberty Street takes an incisive dive into the life and times of Jewish Confederate Gratz Cohen, a scion of two legendary families that straddled the Mason–Dixon line."—Dr. Dale Rosengarten, Founding curator of the Jewish Heritage Collection, College of Charleston

"The insightful product of years of research."—Savannah Morning News

"[A]n engrossing and thoughtful investigation of a slave owning Jewish family in the American South, with all of its attendant contradictions, self-justifications, and cognitive dissonances."—Lauren Gilbert, Jewish Book council

"With a seamless blend between first-person narrative style and historical examination, Liberty Street proves that the past is both personal and intensely present."—Hannah Bone, Southern Review of Books

"Intricate and well wrought, like the iron balconies of old Savannah townhouses, Liberty Street is a welcome contribution to the literature on the varieties of Jewish experience in the nineteenth-century American South as well as proof of the benefits of attending carefully to the shadows the past casts on the present."—Richard Kreitner, Jewish Review of Books

"Liberty Street is a notable addition to gay literature of the South."—Donna Meredith, Southern Literary Review

"Liberty Street's gifts are abundant. Friedman has developed a well-written history with original perspectives, often from the most unexpected of places."—Rain Taxi
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content: A Good Morning America 2024 GMA Buzz Pick

Purchasing a historic Savannah home unlocks the sweeping story of a Southern Jewish family

As Jason K. Friedman renovated his flat in a grand townhouse in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, he discovered a portal to the past. The Cohens, part of a Sephardic community in London, arrived in South Carolina in the mid-1700s; became founding members of Charleston's Jewish congregation; and went on to build home, community, and success in Savannah.

In Liberty Street: A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War Friedman takes the reader on a personal journey to understand the history of the Cohens. 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. Friedman draws on letters, diaries, and his experiences traveling from Georgia to Virginia, uncovering hidden histories and exploring 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: Southern History, Civil Rights, African American Studies, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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custom_subtitle:African American Community Development in Arlington, Virginia, from the Civil War through Civil Rights
custom_byline1: Lindsey Bestebreurtje
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custom_author_blurb:Lindsey Bestebreurtje, PhD, has served as a curatorial assistant with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2015, where her work has earned the Excellence in Exhibition Award. Her publications have appeared in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and Reviews in American History.
custom_reviews:"A creative study of African Americans as 'city-builders,' despite ongoing social, economic, and political injustice in their everyday lives, families, and communities."—Joe William Trotter Jr., author of Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America.

"Through exhaustive research Bestebreurtje provides insight into the evolving tactics used by Black residents to blunt efforts to destroy their homes and their community institutions."—Spencer R. Crew, Clarence J. Robinson, Professor of History, George Mason University, Director Emeritus of the National Museum of American History
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content: The story of how racial segregation and suburbanization shaped lives, the built environment, and the law in Arlington

In Built by the People Themselves, Lindsey Bestebreurtje traces the history of the Black community in Arlington, Virginia, from the first days of emancipation through the civil rights era in the twentieth century. A core insight of her account is how common people developed strategies to survive and thrive despite systems of oppression in the Jim Crow South. Moving beyond the standard story of suburbanization that focuses on elite white community developers, Bestebreurtje analyzes African American-led community development and its effects on Arlington County.
categories: Civil War, U.S. History, paperback, ebook, hardcover, Books,
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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: Southern History, ebook, hardcover, Forthcoming, Books, Cookbooks & Foodways,
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custom_subtitle:Distinctive Foods and Stories from Where Eating Local Began
custom_byline1: Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields
custom_byline2: foreword by Mashama Bailey
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custom_author_blurb:Kevin Mitchell is the first African American chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of Charleston and holds degrees in culinary arts and southern studies from the Culinary Institute of America and University of Mississippi. He is the co-author, with David S. Shields, of Taste the State: South Carolina's Signature Foods, Recipes, and Their Stories.

David S. Shields is the author of numerous books including Southern Provisions: The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine and, with Giselle Kennedy Lord, the James Beard and IACP award finalist The Ark of Taste: Delicious and Distinctive Foods that Define the United States. He is a recipient of the Southern Foodways Alliance's Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award and chair of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.
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content: Ingredient by ingredient, dish by dish, take a tantalizing tour of Georgia's signature foods

"Taste the State Georgia and the regional foods within it can be a source of pride for people and communities. . . . This book will prepare you for your next Georgian culinary adventure and give you a bit of history on why southerners eat what they eat."
—Mashama Bailey, chef and owner of The Grey, Savannah

From apples to peaches to Vidalia onions, Georgia is home to some of the finest produce grown in the American South. From Brunswick stew to Savannah Red Rice, the state's signature dishes are steeped in history. In Taste the State Georgia, chef Kevin Mitchell and culinary historian David S. Shields reveal the stories and history that have made this rich food culture what it is today.

Arguing that Georgia was one of the first states to enthusiastically claim regional cuisine as a marketing tool, Mitchell and Shields explore each of the state's regions, highlighting foods such as Fort Valley Pecans from Central Georgia and Sapelo Island Clams from the Sea Islands. Beyond such staples of the Georgian diet, the authors emphasize more recent culinary creativity, which has produced favorites like the pimento cheeseburger and Vidalia onion cornbread. Sharing stories of heirloom cultivars and innovative kitchens, Taste the State Georgia is a testament to both the enduring memory and future possibilities of Georgian cuisine.

Taste the State Georgia includes sixty-five alphabetical entries, with numerous historical recipes, fourteen original recipes by Chef Mitchell, forty-eight color images, and a foreword by celebrated Savannah chef and author Mashama Bailey.
categories: Cultural Studies & Sociology, U.S. History, paperback, ebook, Books, Women's & Gender Studies, Native American Studies, Queer Studies,
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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, Books,
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Pages: 146
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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 and Wallace Stevens and the Contemporary Irish Novel: Order, Form, and Creative Un-Doing.
custom_reviews:"Ian Tan captures the beauty, complexity, and, as significantly, the urgency of Barbara Kingsolver's work in this thoughtful study. In using the lenses of ecocriticism and ecofeminism in his readings of her work, Tan highlights the ethical foundation of Kingsolver's vision while still creating space to probe the rich characters and very human themes that define her oeuvre."—Catherine Seltzer, Virginia Commonwealth University
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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, Books, South Carolina History & Culture, Travelogue & Essays, 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.
custom_reviews:"A fast-paced narrative about a remarkably ambitious Southern city—a city always evolving but over the centuries still as recognizable as its river and falls!"—Greenville Mayor Knox H. White

"Bainbridge has created a panorama of the growth of the city and county of Greenville, written in her usual lively, engaging style. The story is filled with details gleaned from her decades of immersion in local newspapers and records. Read and enjoy!"—A. V. Huff Jr., professor emeritus, history, Furman University
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content: A concise and engaging history that traces Greenville's development from backcountry settlement to one of America's best small cities

Today, Greenville, South Carolina, is regularly included on lists of the best cities and 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 weekend getaway for tourists interested in art, culture, nature, and cuisine. In this lively historical account illustrated with sixty 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 western outpost 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, Bainbridge charts the development of this dynamic city.
categories: Southern History, paperback, ebook, Books, Travelogue & Essays,
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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.
custom_reviews:"A beautifully crafted journey through the past and current South that will interest Southerners and readers curious about the region and its history."—Library Journal

"A righteous plumbing of suppressed family histories, a vigorous exorcism of the myths and willful ignorance that trouble the land of his birth, A Deeper South blazes a path through the nostalgia thicket for readers who want to make sense of their inheritances. Candler writes with indignation and empathy, showing us a better way to see the South so that we can better love any place we call home."—John T. Edge, author of The Potlikker Papers and host of TrueSouth

"[Pete's] work is about the stories the South likes to tell and probably shouldn't and about the stories the South doesn't tell and most definitely should."—Tommy Tomlinson, author of The Elephant in the Room, and host of the SouthBound podcast

"Part history, part memoir, and part self-discovery, Candler calls on us to face the demons of our past so that we can truly appreciate the region we call home."—Karen L. Cox, author of Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture

"Candler explores the truth hidden behind the romance of place and digs deep to seek out harsh truths that have been silenced, overlooked, or obscured by willful blindness. This is a book that will help foster a new way of seeing the South."—W. Ralph Eubanks, author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape.

"A beautifully conceived and executed piece of historical reclamation."—Margaret Edds, former reporter, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and author of What the Eyes Can't See: Ralph Northam, Black Resolve, and a Racial Reckoning in Virginia

"Combining the academic seriousness of Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed with the car mileage of Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, Candler offers an insightful meditation on traveling the South and thinking about its often tragic history."—Evan Kutzler, H-Slavery
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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. Candler, who belongs to one of Georgia's most recognizable families, confronts the uncomfortable truths of his own ancestors' roles in the South's legacy of white supremacy with a masterful mix of authority and a humbling sense that his own journey of unforgetting and recovering has only just begun.
categories: Outdoors & Nature, Memoir & Biography, paperback, ebook, 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
custom_awards:2024 Pinnacle Outstanding Achievement Book Award, awarded by The Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA)
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

"Luce's meticulous research and considerable abilities to synthesize vast amounts of information give us a much more complex engagement with the archives and drafting process than we have seen before. [. . .] This book proves what many in McCarthy scholarly circles have felt for a while: Dianne Luce has done more to put together the biographical pieces of McCarthy's puzzle than any other scholar."—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, 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. He spent the first seven years of his legal career with Legal Aid of North Carolina and the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia, where he was part of movements to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Boston College Law School, Langberg resides in Colorado.
custom_reviews:"Thanks to this book, Pitts' story is lovingly preserved for posterity, along with the triumphs and struggles of his clients and the countless courageous souls who participated in the movements that he served."—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

"By telling the story of Lewis Pitts, Langberg opens a window on history to show a new generation how the people helped make a lawyer who could represent their interests."—Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, author of White Poverty

"Langberg's portrayal of Lewis Pitts' intrepid career offers an intimate history of a half-century of legal justice movements."—Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures

"Lewis Pitts' story tells us what it means to be not only 'for' the people, but 'of' the people. Every law student and lawyer should read this book, and then act upon its insights."—Michael E. Tigar, law teacher, human rights lawyer, and author of Sensing Injustice

"Lewis Pitts exemplifies what it means to be courageously committed to justice. Langberg gives us a skillful and engaging account of the remarkable and inspiring sacrifices Pitts made to speak truth to power."—Anita Earls, Senior Associate Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court

"Lewis Pitts is one of the South's greatest arc benders. Langberg's moving book opens him up for all to see."—Gene Nichol, Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina, author of The Faces of Poverty in North Carolina

"Langberg's ode to Lewis Pitts is an inspiration to all of us who have fought against white supremacy and for equal justice."—Flint Taylor, The People's Law Office, and author of The Torture Machine

"Langberg offers poignant witness to the revolutionary lifework of Lewis Pitts, peaceful warrior walking crooked roads full of torches in the middle never flinching from injustice."—Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
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content: Be inspired by this grassroots civil rights lawyer's quest for democracy, equality, and justice

Born in 1947 and raised in rural South Carolina, Lewis Pitts grew up oblivious to the civil rights revolution underway across 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 and communities, while working in various social movements and then for legal aid. These grassroots efforts included fights to end nuclear proliferation; seeking justice for victims and survivors of the Greensboro Massacre; restarting the local government in Keysville, Georgia; preserving Gullah culture on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina; and ending corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina.

Beyond documenting a life well-lived and shedding light on lesser-known activists and movements, Langberg, in this thoroughly researched biography, explores problems that continue to afflict the United States today: poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, racism, police misconduct, voter suppression, child maltreatment, and corporate power. The Life of a Movement Lawyer will energize, inspire, and compel action by those who seek to continue the pursuit of justice for all.
categories: Political Science, Rhetoric & Communication, Studies in Rhetoric & Communication, paperback, ebook, Books,
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custom_title:
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_price: $
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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.