South Carolina Books

Best Companions is a 532 page compendium of letters between Eliza Middleton Fisher and her mother, Mary Hering Middleton. The letters bridge Charleston, Philadelphia to Newport, through the years 1839-1846. This seven-year conversation, encompassed in some 375 letters, connect the cultural and social life of the North and the South even as other forces conspired to tear America part from within. Enhanced with an Epilogue, extentensive bibliography, and comprehensive index, Best Companions is intimately showcases the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and widespread opinions of a close mother and daughter. Best Companions is not to be missed!

This is a great book for hiking with your dog on trails in the western and eastern parts of North Carolina. This book is a part of a series by Mountaineer books and gives great details about elevation, water, trail difficulty, etc. I would recommend this book to anyone who walks their dog on trials and and in the outdoors. Plus all dogs love the trails anyway. Great pictures of dogs on the trails too!

Some of the finest, most authentic, and culinarily unique recipes to be found are in local and regional cookbook collections. Quail Ridge Press is famous within knowledgeable circles for their state-specific cookbook anthologies that select the very best of recipes from favorite cookbooks published within the geographical and culinary traditions of a particular state. Such is the case with Gwen McKee and Barbara Mosely's "Best Of The Best From South Carolina Cookbook" which showcases true dinner table treasures taken from a series of diverse cookbooks who hold one thing in common -- they were all published within the confines of South Carolina. From Beverages and Appetizers, to Pies and Other Desserts, the recipes range from Sweet Potato Muffins (Catering to Charleston); Street party Grape Salad (Cooking Carley Style); Broccoli Rice Casserole (A Taste Through Time); and Venison Meatballs (Family Treasures); to Crabmeat Stuffing (A Collection from Summerville Kitchens); Chicken Parmigiana (Go-o-od Goodies from Good Hope's Good Cooks); Red Velvet Cake (Bountiful Blessings); and Half-Way Cookies 9Gracious Goodness: Christmas in Charleston). One especially nice feature of "Best Of The Best From South Carolina Cookbook" is its 'Catalog of Contributing Cookbooks" which provides a succinct description and ordering information for those cookbook enthusiasts who would like to seek out what else is offered in addition to the selected or representative recipes from that particular source. There's even a one-page 'South Carolina Timeline' that presents chronological highlights of the state from 1521 to 2005. Dedicated cookbook collectors while want to visit the Quail Ridge Press website for their complete and extensive list of 'Best of the Best' state oriented cookbooks. Spiral bound so as to lay out flat upon a kitchen counter, and thoroughly 'kitchen cook friendly' in the presentation of the individual recipes, "Best Of The Best From South Carolina Cookbook" is an enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal or community library cookbook collection!

I picked up this cookbook on a trip to Charleston, and I find myself using it over and over. The recipes are drawn from many different church, community and locally-published cookbooks throughout South Carolina. The result really gives one a flavor of the state. I have tried many recipes and haven't had any failures yet.

I loved the seafood when I was visiting the state, and the seafood recipes in this book are great. I especially like the crab stew and the Lowcountry Fettucine (fettucine with a variety of seafood mixed in).

The non-seafood recipes are also wonderful. Parmesan Picnic chicken travels well, just as the book promises, and the Stuffed Shells Florentine has become a favorite with almost everyone in my extended family. I also especially enjoyed the recipe for the authentic Lady Baltimore Cake - time-consuming but delicious.

As with the other books in this series that I have tried, I would recommend this one highly!

After two difficult years, private investigator Erik Whiteside finally succeeds in finding the bad boy brother Win Hammond of elderly Miss Addie. Not long afterward, Win returns to Hilton Head allegedly to see his sister. However, Erik's "partner" at Simpson and Tanner, Inquiry Agents Lydia "Bay" Tanner wonders what the odious Win really wants. She and her family, friends of Miss Addie, plan to insure her sibling does not rip her off as they expect him try.

At the same time that the prodigal brother returns home, Bay and Erik have two other clients. Karen Zwilling better known to her customers as Britt Swensen, an escort service employee, wants Bay to find a male rapist, and a Georgia socialite Star Kennedy wants her to locate her beloved Wade, who vanished without a trace. When a badly battered corpse is found on the beach, Bay ponders if one of her cases just has been solved, but which one. Not sure, she keeps digging until she finds herself being yanked by the wealthy and the poor of the underbellies of society.

The sixth Bay Tanner regional mystery is a terrific entry as three distinct cases keep the Inquiry Agent and her wannabe partner Erik hopping. The Savannah feel to the delightful story line augments the investigations that Bay and Erik conduct. Fans of Southern heated mysteries will want to read Kathryn R. Wall's latest Georgia peach escapades.

Harriet Klausner

This is a well-detailed study of Black people in South Carolina from their disfranchisment in 1895 to the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968. Much of it is a rather grim look of the society Blacks in SC faced and their difficulty in finding workable solutions to their problems until about 1944, when they fought to regain the right to vote. Newby makes good use of the sources that were available to him at the time, such as a scattering of Black newspapers, and from White newspapers such as the Columbia State and the Charleston News and Courier. From this we get a lot of insight into events forgotten to history such as the Lake City and Phoenix massacres and the "indignation meetings" that Sc Blacks held to protest their plight. Today, Black repositories such as the Avery Center in Charleston and other collections such as the Caroliniana Library of Columbia have better collections of primary sources for current scholars of this subject, but Newby's book is a good start.

Walt Whitman once stated that the interior history of the Civil War soldier would never be told. Though Whitman's assessment is generally true, Edward A. Miller offers us an interpretive rapprochement through a new history of the all-black 29th U.S. Colored Infantry, a unit formed in Illinois. Yet, this work is not simply a regimental history, but a deeper study in the lives of black recruits in the Civil War era, and a journey into the hinterlands of an American racial pathos. Throughout this study, Miller explores in detail the biographies of individual soldiers, revealing their often convoluted histories which seem to be cut from the same mold. Yet, Miller has uncovered interesting and valuable demographic and socio-economic data. In addition, Miller explores the culture of the 29th's white officers, men who were unduly pre-judged as incompetent by their fellow Union soldiers.

The 29th's only substantial combat experience came at the ill-fated Battle of the Crater, where the employment of black regiments was unfairly blamed for battlefield failures. As such, many in the North wanted to place the responsibility for the disaster upon supposedly inferior black troops. However, Miller's historiography yields a saner assessment through a very detailed account of the battle. When the war ended, instead of disbanding, the 29th was brought up to full strength and marched to Texas to meet a perceived threat from French encroachment into Mexico. There life was "difficult, food shortages common, and medical care inadequate." (164), and many died of privation.

Broadening the reader's perspectives, Miller highlights the sixty percent of the 29th's officers and men who filed for pensions from their service. Many claims for compensation based upon service-related disabilities were exaggerated or downright fraudulent. No doubt many of these were motivated by extreme poverty, for a high percentage of the black veterans could find work only as day laborers.

Regardless, though they completed their military service with "devotion and competence" (206), Miller believes that most black veterans gained little benefit from their wartime service. However, when allowed to participate in combat, they performed with proficiency on a par with their white comrades. But national incredulity would persist with attitudes exemplified by "a mix of pity, paternalism, condescension, and racial superiority." (103) All told, Miller's is a welcomed addition to the growing scholarly literature on the individual experiences of the common soldier.

Excellent, one of the most forgotten histories of this country; the political struggles of Freedman in South Carolina, one of the most populated areas of the country. Read and study a political history the state where the Civil War was started.

This work is essential to an understanding of the impact on the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It focuses on Mississippi, the state where African-Americans were almost completely disenfranchised as late as 1965. It traces the efforts of the Mississippi political establishment to evade the implementation of the Voting Rights Act and the persistence of the Civil Rights community in making certain that it be enforced

Myers's narrative examines the story of the US Army's Fort Jackson as the first military instillation in the South to actively desegregate its base after President Harry Truman's groundbreaking decision to integrate the armed forces in 1947. This study, however, explores the broader context of how the fort's experiment with integration influenced the wider civilian community outside its gates: Columbia, SC, which ironically was the capital of one of the nation's most racially divided states. Using previously unutilized sources, including declassified military and government documents, Myers (Univ. of South Carolina Upstate) adeptly traces the institutional changes and challenges of this controversial community transformation, as well as attitudes of participants both black and white. He also smartly carries the story beyond the contentious early struggles in the late 1940s into the end of the Vietnam era to demonstrate the long-term political and social effects of the integration process on the city and the army. Although this case study's context could benefit from comparisons to other military bases of the period, this is a tightly written, well-researched account that will prove useful to both military and social historians.
Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries.
General Readers; Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students; Researchers/Faculty; Professionals/Practitioners.
Reviewed by B. A. Wineman.
From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.