South Carolina Books

Who knew that there were so many interesting and accessible areas to explore along the NC coast? We look forward to taking some of the trips described in this unusual book.

I bought this guide to the North Carolina coast at a book signing by the author while I was at the Outer Banks. It was very useful with an interesting and different slant from the typical guidebook. It makes me want to come back and spend more time exploring other parts of the area in more depth. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves the natural world and North Carolina.

This is a lovely book full of information. photos and illustrations. I purchased it because I found my great-great-great grandfather's cabin in it through Google Book Search. My ancestor was a former slave and to "see" his humble cabin in the hills of North Carolina and learn about it was an incredible find. I really appreciate the research and effort that went into this book.

This is an exceptionally well written book on the various eras in the architectural development of what I consider to be the most architecturally diverse state in the union. I have lived in North Carolina all of my life and I have seen at least 3/4 of the structures mentioned in the book. Bishir does a great job of explaining the forces that lead to the development of these great monuments to society. The photography is quite good, but for some strange reason all of the color photos are in the back of the book out of the context of the writing. I don't like having to flip to the back to see a "pretty" picture (there are plenty less "pretty" B & W photos within the text). This is a huge book that you will have to have a custom bookshelf built for. If you wish to put it on your coffee table please reinforce it first. I've lost three tables due to is mass. All kidding aside, this is a definate must read.

As Governor Jim Hunt says in the forward, "North Carolina is at a crossroads in its history." This "atlas" provides not only a wealth of information, but an intelligent perspective on the future of the state as it enters the 21st century.

Subjects matter includes the natural environment, history, population, urbanization, economy, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, trade, politics, air quality, water resources, crime, health, education, arts, and recreation. I found these topics to be presented in an effective manner and certainly more enlightening than the statistical record one might imagine.

I also discovered, before I placed my order, that I was able to preview some of the book's illustrations at the UNC Charlotte Cartography Lab web site.

I would recommend this text not only to students, researchers and teachers, but anyone interested in a comprehensive and knowledgeable summary of the diverse state of North Carolina.

This is the most comprehensive and informative state atlas I have ever reviewed. Excellent maps, great charts and clearly written text makes "The North Carolina Atlas" a book that needs to be on the shelf of every public library and in the hands of all North Carolina devotes. Over the last century North Carolina has transformed itself from a struggling southern state to one of the fastest growing economies in the U.S. "The North Carolina Atlas" provides a definitive analysis of the changes that have created this wonderful state.

History, population, urbanization, and economy are transforming forces that molded North Carolina into what it is today. Each of these sections are clearly laid out so that the reader can make a critical analysis of the change and form an assessment of the coming changes that the future may bring.

Especially interesting are the sections that deal with quality of life in North Carolina. Crime, education, health care, water and air quality, cultural arts and outdoor recreation are profiled and supported by scores of maps, charts and diagrams. This is a book I would especially want in my possession if I was considering moving my family and business to this State. Highly Recommended.

North Carolina is so often overlooked as the subject for a beautiful coffee table book. Yet it's a "natural," with so much variety (seashore, steamy lowlands, Piedmont, rugged mountains). So I was dubious that an affordable book like this could do the job. But congratulations to Carol Highsmith and Ted Landphair for pulling it off. The photography is absolutely magnificent. There's a compact introduction with delightful old photos that sort of sets up the "tour" of the state. And then a very logical trip across North Carolina. I especially loved the unexpected and quaint shots, like the old general store exterior in Catawba, two guys playing checkers inside another general store in Valle Crucis, and some nostalgic shots of tobacco farms and wildflowers and a Civil War re-enactment. The photographer and writer even managed to include a great shot of the Dismal Swamp. Next to taking a month and touring the Tar Heel state on your own, this surprising book is the best way to see North Carolina.

A neighbor wants to "go home" to North Carolina. I bought the book for him for Christmas so he can "dream" before he gets there!! The book has beautiful pictures and good information about the state.

Patrick O'Kelley seems to have covered every Revolutionary War Battle and Skirmish for 1781 for N.C. & S.C. in this book. He has done the same for 1771-1779, 1780 & 1782 in his other books. These are a must have for the Revolutionary War enthusiast or researcher. Most of the South Carolina Battles are in this book.

As with his first two volumes, O'Kelley continues with chronological briefings of all skirmishes and battles in the Carolinas and Georgia, this volume covering the year 1781. Nearly all of the reports include the order of battle and commanders for both sides, with the outcome where known reported in terms of causualities (killed, wounded, captured and missing) as well as overall victor and significance of the fight.

The value of O'Kelley's book are the narrative reports of skirmishes and small encounters as well as the major battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. The narratives are concise, but usually with enough detail to get more than a flavor of the actions and personality of the leaders, particularly in the bloody clashes between Whig and Tory partisan bands, many of which gave no quarter as some clashes were more for revenge than for political or military gain. "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" demonstrates that nowhere in the colonies was the fighting so extensive, so personal, so destructive as in the Carolinas.

All of the "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" volumes are essential for any student of the American Revolutionary war and/or for students unconventional warfare.

O'Kelley is a retired Special Forces Master combat veteran and an avid participant in Revolutionary War recreations, and with those experiences provides an insight most historians miss. His research is extensive, with much of the incidents he reports about being ignored in the history books. He does an excellent job of separating myth from fact. For example, many believe the Revolutionary War ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Not so. O'Kelley is now working on a fourth volume, reporting on incidents of warefare in 1782 and beyond.

The only negatives are more of a nuisance rather than flaws in reporting. Volume III is riddled with typos and, as in Volumes I and II, he uses endnotes rather than footnotes, requiring the reader to constantly be thumbing back and fourth. However the end notes are extensive,often more enlightening, adding to the authenticity of O'Kelley's exceptional work.

The poems in this small (eighty-three page) collection don't rhyme and don't have regular meter, but are built out of colorful images slapped one atop the other, like paint in the hands of a brilliant artist. Mostly short poems evoking love, death, sex, the earth, history and hope. There is even a poem in honor of Mark Sanford's inauguration as governor of South Carolina, and it's surprisingly moving.

I think what strikes me most about these wonderful poems is their earthiness, their delightful physicality. These poems are not rarefied, but real, steeped in reality. Birds, storms, rivers, dying, grieving and lovemaking all find elegant expression.

Poet Marjory Wentworth is the Poet Laureate of South Carolina, part of a tradition that goes back to Archibald Rutledge. What a treasure for South Carolina! I enjoyed Noticing Eden and I recommend it highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

In the tradition of Pablo Neruda, R.M. Rilke, James Agee and Joseph Brodsky, Wentworth (the poet laureate of South Carolina)presents a series of poems, grouped into four chapters. The poems use mangnificently crafted imagery to conjure memories of windswept shores, night skies and other natural elements. These images, in turn, serve as metaphors for life, love and being. Her thoughtful writing is always original and understandible while never losing a sense of finding believeable magic in everyday things. These are poems to be treasured like fond childhood memories, which reward careful and repeated study with rich experience. Wentworth is a masterful poet working within a great tradition.

The editorial review says this book is ideal for 80ish retirement home individuals. I completely agree, but also feel like it is idea for anyone still inhaling oxygen! The author is absolutely adorable and every time I don't think I'll be able to laugh any more, all I have to do is turn the page. Don't let anyone stick this book into a category based on age- it is a book about a lady who not only appreciates life, but can laugh at it, often in spite of herself.

I have read all of Effie Wilders books. I was happy to see a new one out. I loved going back to Fairacres and seeing all my friends. If you haven't read Mrs. Wilders books you are in for a Delight. Charlotte

If you want a great time be sure and read all three of Effie Wilders books about Hattie McNair and her FairAcres gang. It is most enjoyable. I read all three. I hope she writes more. It makes me understand my Mom more. It almost makes me want to move to a retirement home. Granted there are sad times but also lots of good times. You find out how loving and helpful people are. Have some fun and read this book.

This book added to my appreciation of older adults as vital people with much to contribute. It is well-written and a pleasure to read. Also read other books by this author!

Civil War addicts have always had one big gap in knowledge. That's expecially true for those of us from the South.

What happened to Sherman after he burned Columbia? He shows up a few weeks later with his men marching up Pennsylvania Avenue as the Grand Army of the Republic celebrates the victory of the Union, but what happened to him and his men after they left South Carolina's capitol?

Finally, the mystery is solved. Jim Wise, historian and newspaperman from North Carolina's Triangle Area is the sleuth who has ferretted out the truth. ON SHERMAN'S TRAIL is the answer. He opens up this hidden period of our history with a clear, direct, description of the weeks as the big war wound down. Skirmishes, pitched battles, marches through swamps and fields of North Carolina are laid out as the desperate troops of the South tried to block the massive army that had conquered Tennessee and Georgia, sweeping all before it up to the center of South Carolina. Grim fighting. Deadly. Incessant. Some brilliant efforts. Some hopeless stands. Jim tells the whole story down to the last gasps in the outskirts of Durham, N.C., where he lives.

Jim Wise tells the story, but there's an extra I can't wait to test -- he connects all the places and events to the geography of today. The book can be used as a traveller's guide to the back roads of North Carolina -- roads, villages, and cities that Jim knows like the back of his hand. One can take this book and follow what Sherman's men did. See where he forded the creeks or got stuck in the swamps. Visit the cross-roads and farms he marched by and fought over.

The BIG story is just beyond this one. The story about Lee's effort, ended at Appomatox, to break through and join Johnson for a renewed struggle. We KNOW THAT story -- but this is the critical piece that's been missing.

Thanks to Jim Wise for giving us this lost chapter of the story.

Loren B. Mead

Most of us have stood in some little spot - maybe just a crossroads or a church - and studied a marker commemorating that place. We think about it for a bit and move on. Over time, we accumulate memories of a dot here, a dot there, each worthy in its own right, but forming at best only a vague shape, at worst no shape at all.

Jim Wise connects the dots to reveal for us the full picture of William Tecumseh Sherman's trail through North Carolina. I suspect that even Civil War buffs will whisper "Well, I'll be doggoned" to themselves. The rest of us can say it out loud.

The only problem I have with the book is where to keep it: on the bookshelf or in the glove compartment. I suggest the latter. Mr. Wise has skillfully blended history in with a travelogue. He takes us from interstates through back roads and even along dirt roads when necessary, giving precise driving instructions. At each stop he tells us what we are looking at, and how that place, whether humble or significant, fits into the grand scheme of things. As the outline forms, he oftimes puts shading inside the spaces by using anecdotes and letters and other correspondence (plus lots of pictures) to take us back in time.

The author's droll wit keeps him mindful of situations that a portentous historian might be inclined to let slide: go with Mr. Wise along a dirt road to the small hexagonal brick meeting place of the Richmond Temperance and Literary society. There, on the ceiling, a gold star was painted for each member. The star was painted silver for those deceased. If a member fell off the wagon, his star was painted black. Some stars have been repainted... several times.

What you might want to do is start out lazy, like me, and kick back with an easy, pleasant read as you ride along Sherman's Trail without leaving your chair. Then put the book in the glove compartment. You never know.

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.

This old labor hymn was written by Ralph Chaplin way back in 1915 and is the unofficial anthem of the US labor movement. It's sung at labor rallies and gatherings, but with an interesting twist. Organizers often pass out songsheets because many of the assembled labor activists don't know the words.

It's a sobering and even embarrassing moment for the US labor movement which is now down to about 8% of the private sector workers. Those who romanticize organized labor based on college history classes or nostalgic folksong fests need to remember that solidarity always begins with a hope....not a certainty.

And if solidarity ends in even a small partial victory, you can bet there will have been lot of hard work, hard feelings and heartaches along the way to that ecstatic moment when the victory celebrations begin.

Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger have put together a book that tells how solidarity really works and that yes, the words that Ralph Chaplin penned can become a reality even to those of us who can't remember the lyrics without a songsheet.The book is the product of years of research and writing from a team that consists of a former union organizer and an anthropologist . You couldn't ask for a better combo.­

January 19, 2000 was a bad night for the City of Charleston S.C. and the Port through which so much of it economy depends. What had been planned as a routine picket of a ship being unloaded by a non-union crew escalated into a bloody melee involving hundreds of mostly Black dockworkers and mostly white police. Even though some of the picketers were white, no one doubted that there was an ugly racial component to the behavior of the cops. It's a wonder no one was killed.

South Carolina has a long violent racial history that stretches back to the earliest slave days and many Black South Carolinians had to die before the chains of slavery and later Jim Crow were finally cast off. Although modern South Carolina likes to pretend that its days of white supremacy are over, its citizens know better.

The authors of On the Global Waterfront describe in detail what happened that January evening. Later, local police and union officials both concluded that the confrontation had simply gotten out of hand. Some workers apologized to the police the next morning for the rocks and railroad ties they had thrown. For their part, the local police wanted to settle the whole thing as simple cases of trespass. Police behavior that night was far from exemplary and their provocations and brutality had been fully recorded on video.

City officialdom wanted the whole incident disposed of quickly and quietly so as not give the city a reputation for being "troubled". Troubled ports repulsed rather than attracted the kind of shipping business that the Charleston economy had come to depend upon.

But this was a new Millennium and the realities of a globalized economy made it impossible for Charleston to quietly bury that violent evening.

The 5 men who were charged with serious felony offenses as a result of the riot become the focal point of a complex international struggle that involved competing US dockworker unions, an international network of dockworker militants who saw Charleston as an opening salvo against dockworkers everywhere, a politically ambitious rightwing Christian fundamentalist politician, competing interests among the shipping owners themselves and an expensive legal battle that managed to cross oceans before being resolved.

It would have been easy to lose readers in this bewildering story, but Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger manage to tell it without resorting to facile oversimplification. One comes away with a special appreciation for ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley who led his local through the entire struggle with an intelligence and grace under fire that was key to their eventual victory.

Ken Riley's union was the East Coast based International Longshoremen's Association(ILA), an organization with a tainted history of corruption and gangsterism that had endeared them to the worst of the brutal shipping company owners. Ken Riley represented a new generation of dockworker leaders, people who wanted to clean up the union and adopt a militant stance toward the pressures of the new globalized economy. The oldline leadership of the ILA hated Ken Riley and everything he stood for. It would take many months before the national ILA leadership lifted a pinky finger to help Local 1422.

Fortunately, the West Coast based International Longshore and Warehouse Union(ILWU) had a much different tradition that had grown out of the bloody 1934 San Francisco General Strike. Their leadership evolved from the leftwing movements of the 1930's and their legendary former leader Harry Bridges had been accused of being a communist, not a Mafia thug. Their tradition was one of labor solidarity and alliances with social movements for peace and civil rights.

The modern ILWU leadership grasped immediately the importance of Charleston. If the international shipping industry could break ILA Local 1422 and the port of Charleston went non-union, the results could be catastrophic for dock workers everywhere. The ILWU immediately contacted Ken Riley and offered him the kind of money and international contacts he needed to save not only the 5 workers facing serious charges but his very union local.

On the Global Waterfront takes the reader step by step on how another kind of globalization was evolving, the globalization of the labor movement. As Charleston 5 defense committees sprang up and the creaky wheels of the AFL-CIO leadership began to turn in favor of ILA Local 1422, the authors make it clear that all of this was the result of long exhausting hours of work done by a core of very smart and very committed people with the support of thousands around the world.

When victory for the Charleston 5 and Local 1422 finally came in March of 2002 it was a time for joyful celebration. It also became a time of deep reflection as labor activists around the planet pondered their next move in a globalized economy when money crossed borders at light speed and the economies of entire nations were dwarfed by the largest global corporations

Global capital by its very nature seeks to cheapen the price of labor to increase its profits. To do this it must maintain efficient production while fighting to keep workers as disunited and divided as possible. But efficient modern production is difficult with a dispirited demoralized labor force, so the more far-seeing multinational corporate owners see a place for compromise with the global labor movement. This is not compromise based on any sort of moral values or sense of justice, but a cold calculation of power relationships.

It's class war. But even in war, enemies sign treaties and ceasefires while they anxiously assess what the capabilties of their adversaries might be when the peace is finally broken again.

The last chapter of On the Global Waterfront is called "Not Just Another Labor Story". The authors aren't kidding. It's easy to say,"Think globally, but act locally". But what are we exactly supposed to think about? And what actions are we supposed to take?

The morning after that bad night of violence in Charleston SC, Ken Riley and the other Local 1422 activists did not have immediate answers to those questions. But with their own formidable inner resources and the help of others around the world, they came up with some pretty good answers later on. How they did it is an organizers textbook for anyone concerned about social justice.

What Ken Riley and the members of ILA Local 1422 discovered when they took their campaign on the road was that there really is a solidarity community out there and it is truly global. We don't hear about it much from our corporate-owned media (surprise.....surprise), but it's real, it's growing and we here in the USA really need to take our place in this global community.

Whether you are a union militant, a feminist, an environmentalist, an anti-racist organizer, a peace advocate, a combination of all these things or any kind of social activist at all, it really is Global Solidarity Time.

Living in the world capital of individualistic dog-eat-dog cat-eat-mouse economics, solidarity is not something we are taught in school, inherit as part of our common culture or learn about on "Reality TV". It's going to take some effort, but the Ken Riley's of the world are patiently waiting to teach us all about it.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

This compelling account of the fight to stop decimation of the labor movement by global corporations working in league with the racist anti-labor government of South Carolina may well be the best written and best researched book of its genre. The captivating story pits longshoremen's union local president Ken Riley against South Carolina Attorney General Charley Condon in a David vs. Goliath battle that will have you staying up late to finish the book. The skills of anthropologist Durrenberger and journalist Erem merge seamlessly to produce a tour de force that tells the story of labor action on the waterfront in Charleston before expanding globally to give the reader a clear understanding of how the religious right, neoconfederate southern racists, neoconservatives, and globalizing corporations are teaming up to crush and impoverish workers everywhere by criminalizing dissent while themselves disregarding law and propriety. In the process, the reader is treated to a course on the labor movement more concise and useful than any college semester on the subject. The high global stakes in what would appear on the surface to be an isolated local labor strike are clearly laid out, leaving the reader with an understanding of the threat we all face from the globalization juggernaut. If you only read one book on labor or globalization, this must be it.