South Carolina Books

Edited with an introduction and commentary by Charles R. Mack and Ilona S. Mack, Like A Sponge Thrown Into Water: Francis Lieber's European Travel Journal Of 1844-1845 is a remarkable and personal look into European culture in the mid-nineteenth century, as written in the diary of the intellectual Francis Lieber (1798-1872). A highly recommended addition to European History academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists, this remarkable eyewitness account reflects the distinguished and cultured tastes of its notable author.

This is an amazing book by a writer who deserves much wider recognition! Bonner, unfortunately, continues to be neglected by literary critics and scholars. But this novel, published in 1878, while certainly of interest to the literary historican, will also appeal to lay readers interested in the South, American womanhood, and the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. What makes this novel of superior worth, however, is not only its historical value but also the high quality of the writing. Let me assure you, this is one very well-written book. Bonner combines a coming-of-age narrative with an early realism and generally avoids the sentimentalism of most popular fiction of the nineteenth century. Therefore, readers today will find it very accessible and a pleasant surprise! I taught this book in a college course and my students unanimously enjoyed it and wondered why they had never heard of Sherwood Bonner before.

Like Unto Like challenges many of our stereotpyes about Southern women as passive, dainty belles. Blythe, the heroine, is a very thoughtful, independent-minded young woman, so much so that she is eager to welcome the Northern soldiers stationed in her Southern small town (Yariba) after the Civil War. Much to the chagrin of all around her, she initiates a reconciliation between North and South, only to discover how complex a relationship she has to her family and region. In her love affair with a Northern officer, she confronts her feelings about love, politics, race, the legacy of the war, and, ultimately, her own independence.

The main interest of the book derives from its insider's view of what it felt like to live in the conquered South after the war. But its real charm derives from its heroine, who reminds me very much of Jo in Little Women. Bonner writes of her, using her characteristically ironic tone: "Perhaps if Blythe had been more popular among the young people she would have absorbed herself more happily in the usual interests of a girl in her father's home; but she had never been a favorite. She was called literary. This was an unfortunate adjective in Yariba, and set one rather apart from one's fellows, like an affliction in the family." This, of course, is what endears her to the narrator, and to us. Blythe is different and embraces her difference. But as she grows up and learns to reconcile herself with her community, she struggles to understand her place in a nation that was so recently torn apart and is trying to heal. That this book offers no easy solutions to the dilemmas of its heroine and a nation emerging from Reconstruction is a testament to its excellence.

To keep going as a writer over the years, at least in the minor and non-commercial genre of American poetry, you have to tell yourself some version of Mark Twain's trans-Atlantic cable: "The reports of my death [as a poet] have been greatly exaggerated." Robin Magowan is an American surrealist poet of genuine imagination and linguistic risks who has kept writing over the years with a consistency of tactic and concern that might be called obsessional, wish-drenched fantasy from one point of view and the signature of an authentic style from another.

A special listening is at the core of this poetics of the syllable and the transcendental image. For "God still moves in the sound of the long `o,' as Dylan Thomas once suggested; and although a half-century of deconstructive semiotics (and worse) have taught us to be much more cautious about such enthusiasms for the logos and the mystique of verbal and religious presence, such assumptions and risks of intuitive language and the inscape of imagery are at the core of Robin Magowan's poetry.

Magowan's Lilac Cigarette in a Wish Cathedral, as its wonderful title for this project suggests, registers a poetry of risk-fulfillment, tracking extremities and delicacies of sense and wish, mountain journeys, desert flights, movements into and out of the primacy of ecstatic fulfillment that haunts the Greco-Roman tradition as this comes down to the United States via a "whit manic" incarnation that haunts our little streets and huge continental hungers. He works this through the Emersonian sense of abandonment and solitary quest, which seeks "ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact" of self-loss and the desacralization that is the fate of commodity culture.

This is a singular collection, suggesting a life-long discipline in the poetic image and the path of heightened language, a highly wrought and prolonged "derangement of the senses" a la Rimbaud that has taken Magowan from Greece to Tibet and back it its quest.

The last poem in Lilac Cigarette in a Wish Cathedral (wherein, as Richard Howard aptly puts it in his trenchant introduction, "the hierophant smokes his lilac cigarette in a wish cathedral" that is each poem) is entitled "O," and moves from the crooning and screeching plea of a Whitmanic voice, "O my rooster's urge/ to spring voice loud" to the cranked-up ecstasy (bleeding sound into picture) of "dawn flushed/ crimson screaming o."

Pain and pleasure as elsewhere bleed into the mix, the poet lost into the rooster's urge to give rebirth to the whole mounting and morning landscape. In "Miniature," this transmutation of local scene into the mystique of poetic/ religious presence is effected not so much through the visual as through impactions of the aural, what Hopkins called the "inscape" of leaping vowels: "The pleasure of sounds innocently grasped/ A peacock in the eyes of the rain." This twisted and torqued little haiku of a poem depends on the "e" becoming "I" becoming "a" as much as upon the image transformation. The poem enacts, in "miniature," the mix of hearing and sounding that becomes the aesthetic medium of the "wish cathedral."

In a time still dominated by the locality of image (as in Williams) and the play of skeptical wit (Stevens, and his heirs like Ashbery), Magowan had always pursued something else, something closer to Breton or Michaux and the sources of magical incarnations in European surrealism as a kind of interior Orphic line. Magowan's book thus opens in Greece, and seeks the ecstasy of dance and music as tactic of self-loss. Later, "Orfeo" courts this lineage, where the poet (ancient to modern) descends to mount, "goes in a gorge/ Of pluming, spraying song." No gods or muse arises to help the sense of abandonment and self-loss amid the murmuring of deadly presence, "just a wingbeat to guide/ Murmurous wasp center, alone."

This book has totally opened my eyes to a new relation between American literature and politics. I'm a grad student working on a dissertation on Emerson, and got hold of page proofs of this book because my advisor had them for review. This book argues that the whole notion of American lit as "a world elsewhere" -- as Richard Poirier called it: a world existing in language apart from politics and history -- lies in the relation between literature and politics during the years of Jefferson's presidency. The argument is immensely complex, but the bottom line is that there were two visions of America competing at around the time of 1800: the Federalist vision of America as an organic community based on civic virtue and mutual obligation, and the Jeffersonian vision based on radical French doctrines of equality, with a basis in radical individualism. Dowling's argument is that Jeffersonian radical individualism won, to the point that it has been our "national ideology" ever since. Not just the glorification of the "free" individual, but a market economy, consumerism, emphasis on consumption and "self-expression" through the market, and a mass democracy based on mass taste (TV, supermarkets, etc). The argument of the book is that Federalists, by the time Jefferson's second term had ended, knew that the vision of a "communitarian America" had vanished forever. So they moved the classical republic vision of the American republic into literature, where it became a mode of expression and moral witness. The process starts in Joseph Dennie's Port Folio magazine -- I never even knew it existed before I read this book -- but then continues through Irving, Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry James, and Henry Adams (to name just a few in the tradition of what Dowling calls "literary Federalism." So American literature becomes "America in exile" -- a vision of America vanished from the realm of politics and taking up a new home inside language and the literary imagination. This is a really exciting book. After reading 200 books about gender and identity politics and "the postcolonial other" and similar exercises in empty trendiness, it hit me like a revelation. I've thrown out the whole earlier draft of my Emerson dissertation and am starting all over again.

Amazing book. The real account of a Southern heroine from North Carolina, Mary Bayard Clarke. She travels early America, including Texas and Cuba (you can certainly see she lives up to her motto, the title "Life your own life"). The historical detail and meticulous research by the authors brings out her rich and wonderful writing and poetry. I recommend it as a great addition for any Civil War or North Carolina history buff.

This is a great book for the throne-room browser. a verified collection of words used by hundreds of authors defined and used in context. a useful tool for obscurantist and obfuscators. i no longer get a cut from your purchase so buy with confidence that my opinion is objective
George Stone Saussy III
Pawley's Island, SC

I am an extensive user of travel guides, particularly ones for travelers on a budget. The Lonely Planet books have the same budget travel info on hotels, airline travel, how to get around by bus, train, etc. that my other favorite series, "Let's Go" has. However, you don't get to learn as much history and culture in the Let's Go books like you do in Lonely Planet. Let's Go is more of a reference book. Lonely Planet teaches you local culture and has much more comprehensive coverage of the region, especially this one-the Carolinas and Georgia. Let's Go doesn't give North and South Carolina nearly as much justice as this Lonely Planet book. Let's Go never mentions the Triad or Wilmington, NC. Lonely Planet has a good section on those. This book makes the least-heralded travel destinations look interesting. This series is also updated an average of every two years, and they welcome input from readers and they use it for the next edition.

This book has an entire section on Atlanta, including a set of very good maps and a MARTA map. You will do well in Atlanta with this book. Charleston and Myrtle Beach, and somewhat of Columbia, SC are well documented, and the up-country of Greenville/Spartanburg are represented. In North Carolina, you'll learn about the Triangle, Charlotte, the Western NC mountain region, and all the beach areas from top to bottom. Georgia has the entire state covered, even the mountain areas of the northeastern part of the state, where there are some excellent state parks, and of course, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. You will also get to explore Savannah, Augusta, Hilton Head, and much more. There is a good deal of info in the book, and it isn't overbearing to find your way around in it.

Very good information for international travelers from abroad as well. For those of you who visit our area and have never been to the South before, you'll get a handy primer on its eccentricities and its triumphs, as well as how to get along with the most genteel and aristocratic of Southern ladies and gentlemen.

This beautifully-produced historical account of the tobacco industry in the Pee Dee region of SC stayed in the pile of books on my bedside table for about a month before it finally cycled to the top. Having received the book as a present, I was mildly curious when I picked it up. "OK," I thought, as I began what I believed would be, at best, a cursory examination, "it's a history book." What a pleasant surprise I received! I was immediately drawn in to the story by the eloquent writing style of the authors and the appropriate use of southern expressions. I felt as if I was experiencing the frustration and the joy of the tobacco farmers as they labored to bring in the crop in this unique region of the country. I found each of the illustrations in the book to be clearly presented and to closely fit the part of the story being told. Within a short period of time after beginning my reading, I began going to bed early to allow myself more reading time. Since I only adopt that reading behavior for the page-turners, I knew then I was hooked! My interest continued right on through the cogent explanation of the structure of the tobacco-subsidy system and finally to the conclusion and the insightful comments of the authors regarding the future of the tobacco industry. I wish to thank Prince & Simpson for their intelligent coverage of a complex part of American culture. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in real southern culture, and not that fake, hick Hollywood version so often portrayed in movies, and for anyone interested in really knowing what the tobacco industry is about.

March 27, 2008

Emerging from the evening twilight of the Conservative Era is this gem of a book by Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., about what the New Deal of the 1930's built, and how it was done. No matter which facet the reader holds up to examine - style, insight or inclusiveness, the work shines forth as a model of historical writing. It will also help illuminate a way out of our current troubles.

Although I doubt the author could have known, since he worked on it for many years, present economic circumstances have set a dramatic stage for a book that should be read widely by policy makers and the general public - a setting for it as dramatic as the Red Rocks amphitheatre near Denver, Colorado, which the Civilian Conservation Corps, the fabled "CCC," helped construct. After all, 2008 is the 75th anniversary of the inauguration of FDR (and the New Deal and the CCC - in 1933.) Since the great Wall Street crisis began in August of this year, the "frame" used to describe the calamity in mortgages and the collapse of the "new financial architecture" has, over the months, increasingly taken us back to 1929-1933.

The author has two main purposes for the book: to "uncover" the enormous physical reality that the New Deal built, and then to "begin a reappraisal of this investment." But this is no mere exercise in list making. The first chapter, "Public Works in American History" gives us the big picture on what the government built in the 19th and early 20th century and the shifting ideological perspectives used to justify the activities - and how they were paid for. Then, chapter by chapter we are given gracefully written summaries of each of the major New Deal public works agencies, starting with the CCC. It could have been dry, like much of the "alphabet program" coverage in other texts, but it's not: we get succinct and illuminating portraits of the major guiding personalities - from the well known Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins to the lesser known Robert Fechner, who directed the CCC. And we get a sense of what made the architecture unusual (and outstanding, in some cases) for its time - and enduring, because much of what was built continues in public service today, three quarters of a century later.

So what did they build? Here's just a brief glimpse of the massive efforts: from the CCC: 46,854 bridges...3 billion trees planted; 204 lodges and museums...3,980 historic structures restored; from the Works Progress Administration: 572,000 miles of roads; 78,000 new bridges; 8,000 new parks; 226 hospitals; 2,700 firehouses....350 new airports and on and on for other agencies.

Here's one of my favorite passages, to give you a sense of the author's style, a description of just one project from the 2nd chapter: "Monuments of our Spanish colonial heritage were returned to our notice by the CCC. La Purisima Mission near Lompoc, California, was lovingly rebuilt brick by brick using original adobe construction. Members of the company, `a bunch of Brooklyn toughs,' cried when they left it."

The book has surprises for every reader, of every political persuasion. Try some of these on for what the New Deal left us: from the WPA: San Antonio's River Walk; Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon; from the PWA: Central Park Zoo & Triborough Bridge in New York, the Cow Palace and Bay Bridge, San Francisco; at the Citadel military school in Charlestown, S.C., a chapel, a barracks building and officer's quarters...; the Orange Bowl in Miami, Fort Knox, the Key West Highway; and yes, with a great deal of irony, the terminal building at Washington National (now Reagan) airport in DC; and the carriers whose names would be etched in memories of the Pacific naval war to come, USS Enterprise and Yorktown; from the CCC: the beginnings of Camp David, Maryland and the full Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway, with some help from other New Deal programs. And on and on they go...places familiar to every ear...but whose origins seem to have been forgotten.

There is no drop off in clarity in the second half of the book, with its chapters on the "reappraisal" of what had been built, looked at through the focus of a surprisingly contemporary policy lens, as suggested by the titles: Economic Stimulus, Public Jobs, Federalism and the Paradox of Pork. Whether lay citizen, professional historian or economist looks at these chapters, they will not be disappointed. Leighninger tells us in the final one that since the 1930's there have been only two other comparable public works projects, and both were justified by national defense rationales: Ike's interstate highway system and the space program of JFK. He comments that "no other program of public building since then has involved the nation as a whole and taken place in the public eye. As local public works were split from a sense of national purpose, another division developed - a political one. Conservative leaders, while continuing to support defense spending, became increasingly hostile to domestic spending." And even more hostile to the concept of public jobs, the title for Chapter 11.

Chapter 11 ought to be required reading for the 2008 Presidential candidates, as well as the press corps which questions them so shallowly. Leighninger takes his New Deal job discussion right up to the present, covering CETA and Job Corps and subsequent green conservation corps "variations." His most penetrating insight is this: "when unemployment is seen as everyone's problem, its economic aspects take prominence" over its social ones, and acceptance of public job programs rises. "When unemployment is seen as a problem for certain groups only...seen...as different from the rest of us..." then public support vanishes. I don't think I've ever read such a cogent and fluid public employment analysis done in just 14 pages.

It's a given that one of the attack lines from conservatives is that public works invite corruption - despite the fact the Hopkins and Ickes did a great job in making sure that these New Deal programs were largely corruption free. That's a story in itself inside this book. And well told. The New Deal managed to give federal guidance, oversight and funding while preserving local input and direct participation for an amazing array of infrastructure projects, everything from water treatment plants to murals in new post offices. Comparing the sorry tale of federal involvement in Katrina and the Gulf Coast in 2005 to Hopkins' and Ickes' guidance in the 1930's - I'll take the old New Deal anytime.

And that's why this book is so important. It's hard to pick up a major paper today in 2008 without encountering calls for increased infrastructure spending, much of it centered around a new green Apollo-type project to fight Global Warming, including a proposal by James Galbraith for a National Infrastructure Bank. Many are saying: enough with the pyramid schemes and hedge funds on Wall Street - give us the investments that actually build what we need. And on that note, here's how the author closes out his remarkable book:

"The New Deal, in a very short period of time, contributed a tremendous amount to the nation's public life in the form of physical and cultural infrastructure. That investment paid dividends for many decades thereafter and in many cases is still paying back. That should be remembered in times when commitment to public life ebbs and belief rises that we simply cannot afford to invest. There was a time in our history when people found ways to combat despair by building for the future. The evidence is all around us."

Perhaps that time is here again.

William R. Neil

Great history and mistery, amazing creativity from kids whoactually wrote this book. The book was actually made by some 6th gradegroup at a school I used to go to. The kids made this book and the author was made by a computer that scarmbled our school's name (Columbia Montessori Elementary School) into one name.