South Carolina Books

This book is about my great grandfather. I bought it as a gift for my Dad. He read it and loved it. There is even an old photo of the Bishop's family that includes my grandfather as a child, whom I never knew. Amazing. Thank you.

Dori Sanders is one of my most loved authors. Promise Land is a very slight volume (about 30 pages) in which Sanders tells of her life growing up and depending on the land for a living. She is upfront about life for the poorer and black in the South. She also infuses her tale with the sense of community that carried them through those hard times. She reminds us we all have the responsibility to see each other through. I only wish it had been longer and that she would publish more.

When I first learned a few months ago that a biography of Lucy Holcombe Pickens was going to be published I anxiously awaited its publication. I was not disappointed. This is a first class biography of a significant person in the history of the Confederacy that has been overlooked too long. Several years ago I wanted to learn more about this interesting lady; but I found the sources about her few and far between. She does not have her own separate entry in the Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. She is only passingly mentioned in John B. Edmonds, Jr.'s book "Francis W. Pickens and the Politics of Destruction" published in 1986 and this is only because she was Picken's third wife. I could not find much information about her life after Pickens death. He died in 1869 and Lucy lived until 1899. So what happended to Lucy from 1869-1899? This beautiful biography fills in the blanks and Elizabeth Wittenmyer Lewis deserves our thanks for writing it. It is carefully researched and well written. The photographs show Lucy in her later years as well as her younger years when she enjoyed the reputation as the most beautiful woman in the Confederacy. This book is a true treasure and one that I would put on the same level with Elizabeth Muhlenfeld's biography of Mary Boykin Chesnut first published in 1981. A superb work and a significant contribution to the history of Confederate women.

This book is a must have. It gave excellent information about doctors in my state. The information was clear and concise, telling what, when and why the doctors where disciplined and if it was by a state or federal agencies. This book gives consumers the basis to make better decisions when choosing a doctor by knowing if they have ever been disciplined and why.

although this is not a huge book, it contains a wonderful collection of late 18th through 19th century bdecoverings, from woven to embroidered to quilted. the examples are generally beautiful as well as historically interesting.

the introduction is brief but informative, defining the various terms used for bedcovers over time and including fascinating evidence of the value owners put on their textiles. there are also short biographies for the makers of some of the bedcovers, and even portraits in whatever medium was contemporary. also included are a few photos of textile tools, some handwritten weavers' draughts (and cloth woven from them), and a handwritten notebook for embroidery stitches.

the only drawback for me is the book's brevity--i wanted more, more history and biography, and details of the bedcovers, more of the collection.

quilters, weavers, those interested in textile and social history will find this book informative, enjoyable and inspiring.

I gave this present to my aunt and uncle for Christmas as they have recently purchased new bikes and begun riding trails in our area. They have planned a trip to Florida next month and told me this book has been a great source of information in planning their trip. They really enjoyed this gift.

What could I say about a map... it was just what I was looking for wanted as a backup to my navigator

Melendez's research in this fascinating book highlights the dinamic nature of cultural identity construction of the colonial subject and explores the elements of race and gender as components of the author's own colonial agenda (15). The first chapter of the book provides an overview of the book's contents and a detailed look at Carrio de la Vandera's life. The second examines the author's view of the indigenous peoples' otherness, which Melendez argues, is exploited by a discourse that underlines the indians' sexual deviance and lack of language mastery. The third chapter focuses on the author's assessment of the "sistema de correos" between Buenos Aires and Peru and how that assessment is overshadowed by a critique (and subsequent reformatory proposal) of the indigenous people observed during the journey. The fourth chapter focuses on the social and cultural anxiety caused by the African slaves and how the author attempts to eliminate social uneasiness through linguistic maneuvers that underline their inferior nature. The final chapter is devoted to the narrators' view of colonial women as social disruptors (threats to colonial order). I found myself reading the entire book over a period of four days. I recommend it to any reader who is interested in literature of the Spanish-American Colonial period. Footnote: Mariselle Melendez was a professor of mine at Purdue University several years ago, and every publication of hers that I have read has been outstanding.

"The Realist Short Story Of The Powerful Glimpse: Chekhov To Carver" by Kerry McSweeny (Molson Professor of English at McGill University, Montreal, Canada) focuses the professor's analytical commentary on the published writings of five acknowledged masters of the short story format: Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver. Professor McSweeny deftly argues the idea that realist short stories provide a tightly focused and dramatically powerful form that requires the author to a precisely crafted realism though distinctive literary strategies that transcend the writer's various generational, national, and cultural backgrounds. Professor McSweeney persuasively defends the effective short story has integrating three specific components: the entertainment value of the story; reader response to the story's emotional content; and the reader's reflective reaction to the conceptual or cognitive elements. Informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, "The Realist Short Story Of The Powerful Glimpse" is a seminal work of superb scholarship, and a welcome contribution to the literary analysis of the short story format in general, and the application of short story principles to the works of five gifted masters of this distinctive literary form in particular.

The ubject of the slave trade has been written about before but this bookcovers the more interesting topic of the Protuguese trade in the 15th-18th century, and particularly its affects on Africans and the relationship between the church and the slaves, as well as 'others'. This book is scholarly and perhaps slightly dry, but not startinly so, in fact it is also readable and interesting, refreshing and original.

Surely this book adds scholarship to the period, espcially illuminating the relationship between slaves, brazilian society and the church in both Brazil and Portugal. Of particular interest is the work regarding the inqusitions attempts to snuff out tribal religons that remained among slaves brought to the new world.

Seth J. Frantzman