South Carolina Books

Glenn Eskew has detailed the history of the civil rights movement in Birmingham from 1945 to almost the current time. His account is a detailed view of the struggle within the African-American community to find a way to confront segregation that was regnant in Birmingham. He has told a story riveting in its details and close observations. I lived through the period covered as a white liberal in a city undergoing enormous change. I knew many of the players who stride across these pages--Fred Shutttlesworth, Eugene T. "Bull" Connor, Abraham Woods, C. Herbert Oliver,Police Chief E.H. Brown Lucius Pitts, James A. Head, David Vann, Erskine Smith,James Bevels, Tommy Wrenn, Meatball Dothard, John and Addine Drew,Tom King,James Mills,and James A. Simpson. Culiminating in the 1963 marches lead by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., Eskew shows the interaction of the local civil rights movement impacted by a national movement. Before King ever came to Birmingham the struggle for civil rights was carried on by local people who deserve to be valorized. Eskew does not do this. His careful and balanced interpretations make this history at its best. If you want to know how a city becomes captive to an ideology (segregation of the races) in a way that permeates all of social, political, educational and cultural life it is revealed here. You will see how dissenters are rejected and punished. You will see how newspapers, churches, pastors, businessmen--indeed every segment of society--is made to bow down to the God of Segregation. Eskew is all balance and historical objectivity. I fault his account in only one way, which is subject to argument and interpretation. He misses the fact that "vigilante activity," the blowing up of houses, the beating of rebels against segregation, and the general terror that held segregation in place was "governmentally sponsored." The Klansmen who bombed, whipped, cut, tortured and attacked were protected by the police and approved in the community generally. This is a fine study and a wonderful corrective for a generation who think that Martin Luther King was the civil rights movement. It was an indigeous protest movement and different in every community in the South. Eskew tells Birmingham's bloody story, in a fine prose and sense of drama, that brings that old struggle to life.--W. Edward Harris

Dr. Ausband's elegant, easy, affable writing style (threaded with humor and just a hint of the bawdy) mirrors that of his subject, and reading this book is very much like listening in on a conversation between two men sharing their thoughts, observations, and tall tales about their adventures in a land they both love, while warming their hands around a steaming mug of coffee before an autumn campfire. The fact that they are separated by three centuries of "progress" is no barrier to their camaraderie, and because the book is so well written, the reader becomes a member of Byrd's expedition team, too, as Ausband does---without having to clean the mud off his or her boots, or cut through the brush in the Dismal Swamp. Almost incidentally, he or she also gets an education in botany, ornithology, and zoology along the imaginary line that separates Virginia from North Carolina, the descriptions of the animals, plants, and people Byrd encountered (and Ausband revisits) as colorful as the Carolina parakeet that once overran the area--and nowhere to be found is the cloying smell of leather elbow patches and tweed the one might expect such a book to exude.

It's a skillful piece of work, written by a master storyteller, and will be of interest to anyone who is a student of Byrd of Westover, a resident of the geographic area, a fisherman or hunter or hiker, or a bibliophile unable to resist the lure of an exceptionally well-wrought book.

Cape Hatteras: America's Lighthouse is a treasure to all of us who love what is arguably the most famous lighthouse in the world. The authors should be commended for writing not only a fascinating look into the past and future of this great beacon, but also a damn fine tale of passion, perseverance, intrigue, romance, grand schemes, utter calamities, and vast heroism.

This is an important bit of American history but it is not a dry text. This book is a real page-turner, one that will illuminate your mind as surely as the Hatteras lighthouse on a frightening, dark sea. Like the mariners which once depended on the light to skirt a dangerous coast, after you finish reading this book, you will be grateful for the experience.

For those who know it, the Huguenot-derived name "Pettigrew" immediately evokes the associated word, "Gettysburg." Brig. Gen. Johnston Pettigrew was prominent on the first day of that battle, as the commander of Pettigrew's Brigade, and on the third day, as the commander of Heth's Division, which included his brigade. Pickett's Charge might as well have been called Pettigrew's Charge, or, as Clyde Wilson suggests, "Longstreet's Assault." But as it is, there is still no Gettysburg without Pettigrew. Not long after that Fourth of July that coincided with the fall of Vicksburg and Pettigrew's own birthday, the Army of Northern Virginia was without Pettigrew. He was killed in the chaos of a rear-guard action at Falling Waters, and his loss was much lamented, for it seems that everyone knew his quality.

Pettigrew's Civil War career was not consonant with his ability, and that was almost certainly a matter of luck. He was active in organizing the defense of Charleston before the Fort Sumter crisis but played no great role in the thing itself. He was wounded and captured at Seven Pines or Fair Oaks Station, the beginning of the Seven Days. Exchanged, he served under D.H. Hill in the abortive action at New Bern and at the affair at Blount's Creek. Clyde Wilson has not written for us the story of a Confederate brigadier, however, but an account of a mind and sensibility that could not be completely expressed in the Civil War.

Johnston Pettigrew grew up as the scion of a distinguished and landed family in North Carolina. He excelled at school and at the university at Chapel Hill. He was soon surveying stars for Matthew Fontaine Maury at the National Observatory. But what was Pettigrew to do as his lifetime calling? Though Pettigrew eventually did much legal work in Charleston, Wilson has shown how his energy and sensitivity were focused by his travels in Europe. Unusually mature for his age and exceptionally responsive to the various environments, Pettigrew's two trips to Europe were the high points of his life. His mind and imagination were excited to a remarkable degree by his encounters with others, and, as always with him, there was a gap between his emotional and intellectual responses. Pettigrew was later to declare that he wished as his lifework to write a history of the Moors in Spain. He did not live to do it, but his serious intent speaks volumes about his imagination, his historical sense, and his ability to think past the provinciality that is often the lot even of intelligent people.

Pettigrew did not write of medieval Spain, but he did write a book, in the spring of 1861, about Spain, his travels there, and his reflections. He had the ability to see past the surface into the depths of culture and character. Though a man of his age and place, he could and did respond to Spain as a 19th-century romantic with a pronounced streak of intellect. He loved the Spanish dignity and passion, the hierarchical sense, the manners of the don and the do-a. And he was quite explicit about the political affinities he sensed between the American and European Souths. As he wrote on entering Spain for the second time,

Adieu to a civilization which reduces men to machines, which sacrifices half that is stalwart and individual in humanity to the false glitter of centralization, and to the luxurious enjoyments of a manufacturing, money age!

On his first trip to Europe, Pettigrew had learned that he could not enjoy the values of the English and the northern Germans. He instinctively was pulled to the south, where he became as besotted by Italy as many another has been. But then there was Spain, for which he felt a high degree of knowing identification. For a man of his background and cultural assumptions, his ease in relating to another world was remarkable, and so was his mastery of languages. Pettigrew was not unique in that regard, however, for the story of American attraction to the repudiated continent is old and varied. Even so, his degree of self-consciousness, his sense of himself as a Southerner, and his sense of himself and his heritage in historical perspective are notable achievements by a man of many talents. Pettigrew's sensibility is oddly modern in its development. He seems to have arrived at something like Henry Adams' position 40 years before that South-despising ironist did. And therefore, Wilson's life of Pettigrew is much more than a military tale. Rather, it is a valuable contribution to American intellectual history.

As Professor Wilson has said of Pettigrew's work at the very beginning of the Civil War,

Still, strangely, the zeal with which Pettigrew immersed himself in his pressing tasks did not at all preclude his customary ironic detachment, the hallmark of a good mind able to rise above its immediate circumstances.

Just so. The fact that this particular cavalier, lawyer, scholar, and scientist wore gray and was glad to do so says much about his own age, but also something about ours. Clyde Wilson's elegant performance is addressed not only to the shade of Johnston Pettigrew and the world that died not long after he did but to the consequence of that collapse and the continuing cultural calamity. Carolina Cavalier is an antidote for, or a rebuttal to, the contemporary propaganda that suffuses the airwaves and clots the presses. It is the best historical work I have seen in a long time and an invaluable statement about the Civil War, its meaning and character, its causes and issues, and its abiding significance. I missed this book upon the occasion of its first publication but can now only feel that I was lucky in that mischance. I have had the serendipitous pleasure of a delayed first reading, and, in that glow, I think I will be far from alone.

J.O. Tate is a professor of English at Dowling College on Long Island.

This review originally appeared in the December 2002 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

Out of print cookbook by hometown ladies...my daughters and I have long since moved out of the area where this was written. Thanks to Amazon, I was able to surprise my oldest daughter for her birthday. She has always loved the recipes, and seeing the names of her friends' moms in print has brought back lots of fond memories!

THANKS!

This book definitely opened my eyes to a new understanding of the important role rice played in the Lowcountry's history. I liked how the story was told with firm historical facts but also personal information from Schulze, who was a very interesting pioneer of the crop. Very good read...

If you are from South Carolina and you love southern cooking, then you should have The Carolina Housewife in your kitchen. It is fascinating to learn what SCarolinians were eating in the nineteenth century. Spend an evening in the past having a nineteenth-century meal! Learn how to make your own mayonnaise, ginger beer, hommony, etc. The University of South Carolina Press should be commended for keeping this book in print. Perhaps they will consider a paperback edition in the future.

Tom Fowler's Carolina Journeys: Exploring The Trails Of The Carolinas Both Real And Imagined is an engaging and rather unique compilation of commentaries on locations and landmarks of the Carolinas as observed by a Carolina expert with years of little-known knowledge enhancing the book as a greater map of the Carolinas then any other standard travel guide. Carolina Journeys informs the reader of such occurrences and places as the tales of Tom Dooley, Hernando de Soto, the shad fish, the Great Indian Trading Path, and grand old trees and rock carvings that still dot the Carolina landscape. Carolina Journeys is very strongly recommended to all visitors, residents, natives and aspiring visitors of the Carolina area, as it is a fun and eclectic collection of Carolinas' most intriguing stories and locations. If you are traveling the Carolina's for fun or business, don't leave home without your own personal copy of Carolina Journeys!

While compiling a listing of North Carolina wineries, I stumbled across Pamela Watson's book in a local library. With the wealth of history on grapes and winemaking in the Tarheel State, I bought an autographed copy for my personal library. I found it perfect for the day tripper, as this paperback fits nicely in a picnic basket or the door map pocket of my van. Extensive interviews with winery owners, lots of history, precise driving directions, wine listings, food pairings, and other sites of interest near each winery (including chambers of commerce, lodging information, and recommendations for local eateries). Well researched and complete for both North and South Carolina and their burgeoning wine industry. Contains telephone numbers, web sites (if available), and suggested winery groupings for day tours. Would that all winery guides be this complete!

I just want to say that the thing I loved about this book was the illustrations. I LOVED how so many women were depicted carrying their babies around in various slings. Such a good message wrapped up in a sweet story.