South Carolina Books

No hay otro libro donde uno puede entender la mentalidad de Weiss, un dramaturgo que a través de sus obras nos muestra documentos de guerras. El teatro documento, es una forma de mostrar esa realidad que muchos vivieron y otros no, denunciando los horrores de la guerra, moviendo la conciencia social mundial para que se conozcan estos crimenes, que hasta el día de hoy siguen y seguirán sucediendo.

Alan Astro has done a magnificent job of reading Beckett's oeuvre. His analysis is acute and sometimes brilliant: I have never read a better piece on _Endgame_, and Astro's take on _Watt_ is incredible. There is no contemporary critic who has dealt with the primacy of the signifier in Beckett's work the way that Alan Astro has, is, and will continue (we hope) to do. His contribution to scholarship and performance cannot be overstated.

A definitive interpretation of the major plays that covers the characters, structure, and language of the plays, this work is especially impressive for its insights into Williams' poetic language. It explains clearly the imagery of the language, its rhythms and diction, as well as the visual dramatic effects that made Williams an innovator in his day. If you like the plays, buy the book! You'll love it.

This is a wonderful book to read if you enjoy Le Guin's fiction. It's useful to readers and academics alike because Cummins has split the book into four sections that study the settings for Le Guin's stories. There is a section for the Hainish Universe, another for her works set on the future-West Coast of America, one for the Earthsea books and so on and so forth.

Reading a book structured like this is a delight because Cummins has tied in themes and concerns of Le Guin's work with her fictional settings. It reads like a detailed and complex unofficial Ursula Le Guin handbook, with many references to the tao te ching and other philosophical pre-occupations, but is easy to read and simply ~*fascinating*~.

Understanding William H. Gass by poet and author H. L. Hix is a very thoughtful, informative, scholarly guide to the novels, short stories, novellas, and essays of William H. Gass, an American writer and philosopher with a keen grasp of ethical dilemmas and the lasting effects of childhood "hurts." A scholarly and meticulous discourse on the work of a very intelligent and expressive author, Understanding William H. Gass is very highly recommended for academic Literary Criticism and Philosophy collections, as well as "must" reading for students of the life and work of William H. Gass.

De Forest describes his experiences as a Freedmen's Bureau agent during Reconstruction in Greenville, SC. Not only is his story very engaging, but he provides a unique look into the turmoils of reconstruction, why it failed, and the real people that existed at the time. Although De Forest does regard the South as defeated and backwards, he maintains a fairly balanced outlook despite his status. De Forest is very good at describing the decay of the Old South and the birth of the modern southern US. Overall, an excellent work.

This book was very helpful to read on the way to our campus visit. Though everything in this book cannot be taken as "everyone's opinion" it is great to have an inside view from various students on their thoughts. We did not see the girl/guy ranking as the book had noted... the students we saw on campus seemed like a great mix of beauty as well as ethnicity. However - we were able to have a lot of "inside knowledge" before even stepping foot on the campus - this enhanced the visit a lot. The information about Honors College also helped. This book is highly recommended if you are seriously considering this school. We LOVED University of South Carolina and is in the top tier of choices.

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.