South Carolina Books

This is fine book, written in beautiful, lucid prose, full of stunning B&W photographs. Featured are off-the-beaten-path places like the teeny-tiny post office in Salvo on the Outer Banks and the grave of the famous, eccentric Fort Fisher hermit who once mesmerized visitors to his home in a WW II bunker near Carolina beach. The author, a native of Charleston and a veteran columnist for the Charlotte Observer, has interviewed natives of the last unchanged and rapidly changing places along the Carolina coast. Most of the islands and coastal towns (from Hilton Head to small Outer Banks towns to Charleston) along the coasts of the Carolinas are represented.

The author interviewed and photographed: descendants of slaves who still make sweetgrass baskets in the old tradition; the last of the old-time clam rakers, crab pickers, and boat builders who discuss what new ways have done to their livelihoods, the "Live-Aboards", folks who left their nine-to-five lives to live on modest boats along the water's edge; the Menhaden Chanteymen,a group of singing black fisherman who were once an institution in the days "when boats were made of wood, and men of steel"; the "Hoi Toiders" of the Outer Banks who still speak with the same accent as their seventeenth century British ancestors.

A great browsing and coffee-table book, would make an excellent gift for anyone who has a home on the coast or wants to visit. For anyone who wants a glimpse of the way things were along the vanishing southern coast, or to see what remains with new eyes.

The Venturers is a family history of the highest caliber. It is a well researched and masterful blend of history, genealogy and drama covering 300 years of American history and the role of the Hampton family, beginning with William Hampton the immigrant who came to Virginia from England in 1620 and their allied Harrison and Earle Families. The author, Virginia G. Meynard is a seasoned journalist and experienced genealogist. Make no mistake in thinking this to be mostly narrative; it is a solidly and extensively researched genealogy for either the budding or professional genealogist.

In Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres, Gerald Hauser hopes to rethink the discrepancy between what the political and media elite abstract as the "public sphere" and what ordinary people consider it to be. Hauser surveys political and rhetorical scholarship in an attempt to theorize a more rhetorical politics, rather than an idealistic one. By mapping the trajectory of the discourse around such cases as the Polish Solidarity movement, the Meese Commission on Pornography, and Jimmy Carter's framing of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Hauser crafts a "vernacular rhetorical model" in which partisanship is assumed and embraced rather than bracketed out.

Hauser places Juergen Habermas as his theoretical foil. Habermas proposes a notion of the public sphere as an Enlightenment ideal: the public sphere is concerned with a common good which is outside of private and partisan interests and where irrationality and inequalities can be dismissed in order to act. Like most rhetorical scholars, Hauser, however, disagrees with Habermas' ideal public sphere. According to Hauser, Habermas' Enlightenment take on public deliberation conceals the marginalized and multiple publics, excludes the citizens with a stake in the political process, frustrates the democratic notion of open access, and defies any privileging of diversity. Hauser's "rhetorical model" of the public sphere is a discourse-based, reality-based, and diversified take that encourages shared judgments. He grounds his theory in actual political discourses which prove that interest, rather than disinterest, is crucial to a vital public sphere.

While I appreciate Hauser's privileging of rhetoric as the life-blood of politics and am thrilled to read his thorough defense of partisan rhetoric, I am uncomfortable with his notions of "common good." He seems to be as goaded by his ideal of the "common good" and "dialogue" as much as Habermas' is limited by his ideal speech situation. In a summary statement, Hauser describes the "vernacular rhetoric model" as "assum[ing] that publics emerge insofar as interested citizens, often out of concern for the common good, engage in dialogue on the issues that touch their lives" (189). Looking even at early issues in Campaign 2000, for instance, the "common good" itself was hotly debated and "dialogue" was not the method of deliberation. How can the "vernacular rhetorical model" account for the most fundamental disagreements in which most citizens are the most interested? Thus, I would prefer that Hauser took a more agonistic approach in this model rather than a deliberative, dialogic one.

This guidebook introduces the potential tourist to various utopian communities throughout the United States. Each community is given a chapter, which has an introduction that includes the community's general location, address, telephone number, hours when open, admission, restaurants, shops and facilities. (Everything a tourist could need!) Next follows an overview of the community, its history, and finally a written tour explaining what a visitor will see.

The communities included are: Ephrata Cloister (Ephrata, Pennsylvania), Old Salem (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Mount Lebanon Shaker Village (New Lebanon, New York), Hancock Shaker Village (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), Canterbury Shaker Village (Canterbury, New Hampshire), The Shaker Museum (Poland Spring, Maine), Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (Harrodsburg, Kentucky), Shakertown at South Union (South Union, Kentucky), Shaker Museum and Library (Old Chatham, New York), Old Economy Village (Ambridge, Pennsylvania), Zoar Village State Memorial (Zoar, Ohio), Historic New Harmony (New Harmony, Indiana), Oneida Community (Oneida, New York), Fruitlands (Harvard, Massachusetts), Historic Bethel German Colony (Aurora, Oregon), Bishop Hill (Bishop Hill, Illinois), Amana Colonies (Amana, Iowa), Historic Rugby (Rugby, Tennessee), and Koreshan State Historic Site (Estero, Florida).

This book is a wonderful resource! Not only does this book tell you how you can visit various historic utopian communities, but it also gives you the information you need to understand what the community was about. Complete with pictures, I highly recommend this book.

This is additional information taken from the 2nd printing of the book, 1975.

About the Author:
Max Byrd is an assistant professor in the Department of English aT Yale University, havnig received his Ph.D. from harvard in 1970. Awarded the Know Fellowship by Harvard and the Morse Fellowship by Yale, he ahs specialized in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and American literature. A version of the introduction to Visits to Bedlam won the Winthrop Sargeant Price at harvard in 1970.

Subject Terms: 1. English literature-18th century-History and criticism. 2. Mental illness in literature.

Contents:
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter One / Reason in Madness
Chapter Two / Dunciad and Augustan Madness
Chapter Three / Swift
Chapter Four / Johnson
Chapter Five / Madness at Mid-Century: Melancholy and the Sublime
Chapter Six / Cowper and Blake
Notes
Index

Illustrations

Frontispiece. Sixteenth-century engraving by Matthaus Greuter of Doctor Wurmbrandt curing insanity

Plate 1. William Hogarth's Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism: A Medley (1762)
Plate 2. William Hogarth's last engraving in the series Rakes' Progress (1735)
Plate 3. Richard Newton's A Visit to Bedlam (1794)
Plate 4. The Mad Artist in Chains, an eighteenth-century etching by an anonymous artist
Plate 5. Wash drawing by Thomas Rowlandson of a doctor and a lunatic
Plate 6. St. Luke's Hospital (1809), a colored aquatint and etching by Thomas Rowlandson and August Pugin
Plate 7. Madness, an eighteenth-century mezzotint by and anonymous artist
Plate 8. Crazey Kate (1815), a colored aquatint by G. M. Brighty after Geoge Shepheard

All illustrations are from the Fry Print Collection, Yale Medical Library

200 pages

What a great book. Old photos and family stories of the early beginnings of a wonderful town. Perfect condition, very reasonable price.

The best way to learn history is from the mouths of those who lived it, and enjoying the experiences of the King Ranch Kinenos and the vaqueros of the Kenedy Ranch through their unadorned, first-person accounts puts the reader right back at the last fringes of the Old West period. Indian attacks, raids by Pancho Villa and forays by the Union and the Confederacy forces disrupt but do not change the tradition rich life of the Hispanic cowboy. Loyal until death, theirs was a life of service, duty, and honor. This is a can't-miss read for fans of Texana, Hispanic history, and ranching life.

The Vonnegut Effect by Jerome Klinkowitz (Professor of English and University distinguished Scholar, University of Nor-thern Iowa) is an impressively presented literary study of American author Kurt Vonnegut's amazing ability to retain popular appeal while boldly working in new themes and cutting edge literary forms. A thoroughly researched study of Vonnegut's fiction over the past half-century, The Vonnegut Effect is a thoughtful, thought-provoking discussion which is enthusiastically recommended reading -- especially those craving intelligent discourse about Kurt Vonnegut's remarkable and enduringly popular works of speculative fiction.

Excellent book. Great Illustrations of this pretty old town. Not only are the illustrations excellent the Hisorical Content is outstanding and straight forward. A must have for all lovers of Old Salem.

This is a most facenating true story. it opened my eyes and heart to the black - white history of human relations in this country. It is both heart warming and heart breaking. It is beautifuly written to allow us into the heart center of the author. I am a better person for having read this story and having walked with the author on the grass. God bless her for sharing her story. It is appropriate for our times. It should be considered manatory reading at the college level.