Bøker utgitt av University of South Carolina Press

"An illustrated flight across the Southeast. Award-winning environmental scientist, naturalist, writer, educator, and artist Todd Ballantine wings his way across the vast Southeast with entertaining prose and beautiful, instructive illustrations in this delightful exploration of one hundred birds in their various habitats. Chapter by chapter Ballantine highlights which birds can be found at the beach, along the ocean and estuaries, in marshes and wetlands, across fields and open areas, among the brush at the wood's edge, and in the forest. Through his accurate and expressive illustrations, he identifies their plumage, silhouettes, shapes, and coloration, as well as their migration, habitats, and behaviors. Birdlife will be an entertaining and enlightening companion for the birder who forays across the southeastern states or anyone who enjoys learning about birds"--

A study of recent shifts in the depictions of Asian cultural stereotypes The Tao of S is an engaging study of American racialization of Chinese and Asians, Asian American writing, and contemporary Chinese cultural production, stretching from the nineteenth century to the present. Sheng-mei Ma examines the work of nineteenth-century "e;Sinophobic"e; American writers, such as Bret Harte, Jack London, and Frank Norris, and twentieth-century "e;Sinophiliac"e; authors, such as John Steinbeck and Philip K. Dick, as well as the movies Crazy Rich Asians and Disney's Mulan and a host of contemporary Chinese authors, to illuminate how cultural stereotypes have swung from fearmongering to an overcompensating exultation of everything Asian. Within this framework Ma employs the Taoist principle of yin and yang to illuminate how roles of the once-dominant American hegemony-the yang-and the once-declining Asian civilization-the yin-are now, in the twenty-first century, turned upside down as China rises to write its side of the story, particularly through the soft power of television and media streamed worldwide.A joint publication from the University of South Carolina Press and the National Taiwan University Press.

A 2022 Katie Couric Media Must-Read New Book * A personal meditation on love in the shadow of white privilege and racismChild is the story of Judy Goldman's relationship with Mattie Culp, the Black woman who worked for her family as a live-in maid and helped raise her-the unconscionable scaffolding on which the relationship was built and the deep love. It is also the story of Mattie's child, who was left behind to be raised by someone else. Judy, now eighty, cross-examines what it was to be a privileged white child in the Jim Crow South, how a bond can evolve in and out of step with a changing world, and whether we can ever tell the whole truth, even to ourselves. It is an incandescent book of small moments, heart-warming, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.

Founded in 2013 by Steven Lynn, dean of the South Carolina Honors College, this annual writing contest was designed to engage the state's future leaders and thinkers. Each year the Honors College invited South Carolina high school juniors and seniors to respond to the question "e;How can we make South Carolina better?"e; in 750 words or fewer, in the genre of their choice. The finalists, selected by a panel of preliminary judges, were invited to the University of South Carolina campus for a second round comprising a forty-minute impromptu writing contest. This round was evaluated by two grand judges-South Carolina natives who have achieved national acclaim: short-story writer and novelist Pam Durban and poet Nikky Finney. Each chose a topic for the impromptu contest: write about a meaningful book and complete the statement "e;I come from...."e; This volume features the writing of the seventy-one finalists from the 2016-17 South Carolina High School Writing Contest.

The battle for equality in education during the civil rights era came at a cost to Black Americans on the frontlines. In 1964 when fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to integrate the all-White school, her classmates mocked, shunned, and yelled racial epithets at her. The trauma she experienced made her wonder if the slow-moving progress was worth the emotional sacrifice. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas, revisits her life growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement before, during, and after desegregation and offers an intimate look at what she and other members of her community endured as they worked to achieve equality for Black students in K-12 schools and higher education.Through poignant personal narrative, supported by meticulous research, Thomas retraces the history of Black education in South Carolina from the post-Civil War era to the present. Focusing largely on events that took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during the 1950s and 1960s, Thomas reveals how local leaders, educators, parents, and the NAACP joined forces to improve the quality of education for Black children in the face of resistance from White South Carolinians. Thomas's experiences and the efforts of local activists offer relevant insight because Orangeburg was home to two Black colleges-South Carolina State University and Claflin University-that cultivated a community of highly educated and engaged Black citizens. With help from the NAACP, residents filed several lawsuits to push for equality. In the notable Briggs v. Elliott, Black parents in neighboring Clarendon County sued the school board to challenge segregation after the county ignored their petitions requesting a school bus for their children. That court case became one of five that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation illegal. Despite the ruling, South Carolina officials did not integrate any public schools until 1963 and the majority of them refused to admit Black students until subsequent court cases, and ultimately the intervention of the federal government, forced all schools to start desegregating in the fall of 1970.In Struggling to Learn, Thomas reflects on the educational gains made by Black South Carolinians during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, how they were achieved, and why Black people persisted despite opposition and hostility from White citizens. In the final chapters, she explores the current state of education for Black children and young adults in South Carolina and assesses what has been improved and learned through this collective struggle.

Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area, bringing not only power but also high-speed broadband to rural communities.The rise of "e;public"e; power-electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation-is a complicated saga encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural economic development. Empowering Communities examines how the cooperatives helped bring fundamental and transformational change to the lives of rural people in South Carolina, from light to broadband.James E. Clyburn, the majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, provides a foreword.

Corruption, infatuation, and conflicting loyalties collide in a rural Southern mill town in this debut novel by an award-winning poet and environmentalist.On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker-a reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy-is drawn back into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice.The son of mill workers in Carlton, South Carolina, Crocker works as bookkeeper to the owner, George McCane. And when McCane decides to lay off families connected to the Uprising of '34, Crocker finds himself in the ill-fitting position of enforcer. But days after the evictions, a surprise indictment lands McCane in jail and sinks Crocker even deeper into the escalating tensions.While traversing mountain communities in McCane's defense, Crocker must also negotiate with labor organizers and fend off his family's skepticism of his social aspirations. Meanwhile, hanging over Crocker's upended life is his infatuation with Novie Moreland-the young widow of a man McCane is accused of killing. Looking back on this crucial period of his life, Crocker knows he must seek out Novie Moreland once more if he is ever to find closure with the past.Foreword by New York Times best-selling author Wiley Cash

While slavery and secession divided the Union during the American Civil War, they also severed the Northern and Southern dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In Challenges on the Emmaus Road, T. Felder Dorn focuses on the way Northern and Southern Episcopal bishops confronted and responded to the issues and events of their turbulent times. Prior to the Civil War, Southern bishops were industrious in evangelizing among enslaved African Americans, but at the same time they supported the legal and social aspects of the "e;peculiar institution."e; Southern and Northern bishops parted company over the institution of slavery, not over the place of blacks in the Episcopal Church. As Southern states left the Union, Southern dioceses separated from the Episcopal Church in the United States.The book's title was inspired by the Gospel of Luke 24:13-35 in which the resurrected Jesus Christ walked unrecognized with his disciples and discussed the events of his own crucifixion and disappearance from his tomb. Dorn perceives that scriptural episode as a metaphor for the responses of Episcopal bishops to the events of the Civil War era.Dorn carefully summarizes the debates within the church and in secular society surrounding the important topics of the era. In doing so, he lays the groundwork for his own interpretations of church history and also provides authentic data for other church scholars to investigate such topics as faith and doctrine, evangelism, and the administrative history of one of the most important institutions in America. Dorn devotes the final chapters to the postwar reunification of the Episcopal Church and Southern bishops' involvement in establishing the Commission on Freedmen to offer help with the educational and spiritual needs of the recently emancipated slaves.

An investigation into who burned South Carolina's capital in 1865Who burned South Carolina's capital city on February 17, 1865? Even before the embers had finished smoldering, Confederates and Federals accused each other of starting the blaze, igniting a controversy that has raged for more than a century. Marion B. Lucas sifts through official reports, newspapers, and eyewitness accounts, and the evidence he amasses debunks many of the myths surrounding the tragedy. Rather than writing a melodrama with clear heroes and villains, Lucas tells a more complex and more human story that details the fear, confusion, and disorder that accompanied the end of a brutal war. Lucas traces the damage not to a single blaze but to a series of fires-preceded by an equally unfortunate series of military and civilian blunders-that included the burning of cotton bales by fleeing Confederate soldiers. This edition includes a new foreword by Anne Sarah Rubin, professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and America.

Reveals the political savvy and egalitarian convictions behind Lincoln's racial policiesIn the midst of America's civil rights movement, historians questioned the widely-held belief that Abraham Lincoln was the "e;Great Emancipator."e; They pictured him as a white supremacist moved by political expediency to issue the Emacipation Proclamation. In Lincoln and Black Freedom LaWanda Cox, a leading Reconstruction historian, argues that Lincoln was a consistent friend of African-American freedom but a friend whose oblique leadership style often obscured the strength of his commitment. Cox reveals Lincoln's cautious rhetoric and policies as deliberate strategy to achieve his joint goals of union and emancipation, and she demonstrates that his wartime reconstruction efforts in Louisana moved beyond a limited concept of freedom for the former slaves.Cox's final chapter explores the "e;limits of the possible,"e; concluding that had Lincoln lived through his second term, the conflict between his successor and Congress could have been avoided and the postwar Reconstruction might have resulted in a more lasting measure of justice and equality for African Americans. Lincoln emerges from Cox's study as a masterful politician whose sure grasp of the nature of presidential leadership speaks not only to the difficulties of his age but also to the challenges of our own time.

Why do religious communities remember some events and not others? Why do some kinds of music find a continuing place in worship while others seem to lose their appeal? Why is it that the Islamic tradition is understood so narrowly, even by some Muslims, when in fact it has a broadly textured history of belief and practice? In Memory, Music, and Religion, Earle H. Waugh addresses such probing questions while exploring a rich vein of Islam in Morocco-the mystical chanters. In this book, a detailed study of the interplay between memory, music, and religion, Waugh opens new areas of thought, particularly regarding a theme that cuts across religious traditions: the role of memory in religious formation.Since the glorious days of Andalusia, Muslim poetic and musical traditions have found a vibrant home among Moroccan Sufis. Through rituals of dhikr, or remembrance, the old forms of music and word blend into a new form of worship for today. In this study, Waugh probes the depths of religious memory within Islam and notes the singular importance of memory in comprehending the meaning and styles of music. Showing how the powerful tradition of music nurtures the Muslim soul, Waugh brings new insights to the study of the religious function of memory.

Jonathan Green is best known for his vibrant depictions of the Gullah life and culture established by descendants of enslaved Africans who settled between northern Florida and North Carolina during the nineteenth century. For decades, Green's vividly colored paintings and prints have captured and preserved the daily rituals and Gullah traditions of his childhood in the Lowcountry marshes of South Carolina.While Green's art continues to express the same energy, color, and deep respect for his ancestors, his techniques have evolved to feature bolder brush strokes and a use of depth and texture, all guided by his maturing artistic vision that is now more often about experiencing freedom and contentment through his art. This vision is reflected in the 179 new paintings featured in Gullah Spirit. His open and inviting images beckon the world to not only see this vanishing culture but also to embrace its truth and enduring spirit.Using both the aesthetics of his heritage and the abstraction of the human figure, Green creates an almost mythological narrative from his everyday observations of rural and urban environments. Expressed through his mastery of color, Green illuminates the challenges and beauty of work, love, belonging, and the richness of community.Angela D. Mack, executive director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, provides a foreword. The book also includes short essays by historian Walter B. Edgar, educator Kim Cliett Long, and curator Kevin Grogan.

The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch-Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Desch-Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline.Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Desch-Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Desch-Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Desch-Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor.Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.

Some Southern cooks keep their prized family recipes under lock and key, but not Mary Martha Greene. Why? She says few things can truly be kept secret in the South and recipes, like cheese biscuits, are meant to be shared. That's why she's the "e;Cheese Biscuit Queen."e; So many stories could be written about Greene's Aunt Mimi's cheese biscuits-the countries they visited, and the lies, half-truths, cheating, and conniving of small children (not to mention grown adults) to get them. For Greene, who inherited the title of Cheese Biscuit Queen-and the recipe-from her aunt, making the biscuits and continuing to share Aunt Mimi's recipe keeps her love and legacy alive. In The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All, Greene, a South Carolinian and former lobbyist, pairs more than one hundred tried-and-true recipes for dishes like country ham scones, Frogmore stew dip, shrimp and corn pie, and lemon pound cake with stories from her corner of the South. The book opens with the famous cheese biscuit recipe (complete with family secrets), and the pages that follow brim with fabulous characters, antic-filled anecdotes, and recipes so good they might just call for a change in State House rules (true story). With new ideas for the consummate entertainer, helpful tips for less experienced cooks, and stories to make even the grumpiest legislator laugh, The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All has a place in every kitchen. Great food leads to great memories, and with Mary Martha Greene by your side, even everyday meals can become memorable occasions.

The South Carolina State House grounds are a work in progress-a cultural landscape of human-built and natural components connected physically, conceptually, and aesthetically. As public property, the grounds should represent and welcome everyone in the state. While it is a beautiful space, it is not neutral. Over the past two centuries, various groups have jostled for political and cultural power, and the winners have used the grounds to assert their authority and broadcast political positions on the state's most visible stage. These struggles have resulted in a perpetually evolving space.In The South Carolina State House Grounds, the first comprehensive narrative of this important site at the heart of the Palmetto State, Lydia Mattice Brandt details the history of the state capitol and its setting-including the national, state, and local histories enshrined in its monuments-from 1787 to the present. Brandt argues that generations of private citizens and elected officials, who recognized the power of erecting public monuments and buildings that recall certain versions of history, have consciously shaped this highly charged, visible, and public place to assert authority over both the past and present. By recounting the intentions behind each element in the landscape, this guidebook considers how South Carolinians have used this place as a site of storytelling and mythmaking.The South Carolina State House Grounds, a chronological history of the state's grandest public space, includes more than sixty illustrations that track the site's transformation over more than two centuries. Brandt chronicles the events that occurred in and around its buildings, the stories of the people memorialized in the grounds' monuments, and the histories of the monuments themselves.

Featuring more than 300 recipes that use wild game, fresh and saltwater foods, and some natural seasonings, this cookbook is for those who take the time to scout the woods and wetlands-bringing home quail or duck, deer, turkey, crabs, shrimp and fish. And it's also for those who don't have the means to hunt or fish or gather, but do have access to wild foods and want to serve them at their table.Smoke it, saute it, or stir-fry it-however you like to prepare wild foods-this is the most complete how-to bookbook available for this kind of eating. Included are a glossary and nutritional charts comparing wild and domestic meats, and the fat content of various fish. From smoker to campfire to crockpot to microwave, the Southeastern Wildlife Cookbook has the field covered.Recipes for the Southeastern Wildlife Cookbook were selected from submissions made by readers, fans, and staff of the South Carolina Wildlife magazine and other great cooks of the region. Revisions and editing on this edition are by Linda Renshaw, managing editor of South Carolina Wildlife magazine.

A comprehensive history of one of Charleston's most significant landmarksOn a hot summer day in 1929, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, participated in one of the largest celebrations in the city's history-the opening of the Cooper River Bridge. After years of quarrels, financial obstructions, and political dogfights, the great bridge was completed, and for the first time, Charleston had a direct link to the north. From the doldrums of the Depression to the growth of the 1990s, the Cooper River Bridge played a vital role in Charleston's transformation from an impoverished, isolated city to a vibrant and prosperous metropolis.Now obsolete and no longer adequately serving the needs of the Charleston area, the "e;old"e; Cooper River Bridge, and the "e;new"e; Silas N. Pearman Bridge-the Cooper River Bridge's larger sister structure, erected in 1966-will be replaced. Funding, design, and construction are presently underway to replace the old structure with a single, modern bridge. The two original bridges have become true emblems of Charleston, much like the Eiffel Tower of Paris or the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. With their removal, Charleston will lose two of its most significant landmarks.This vast change in the city's skyline is sure to evoke memories from Charlestonians and visitors who have developed a special relationship with the old bridge. In addition to these reminiscences, the Cooper River Bridge has its own story-one of ambitious men and their dreams of profit, and of a city's dreams of prosperity. Upon its completion, the Cooper River Bridge was a grand symbol of Charleston's vision for the future, and the bridge recalls many significant themes in the modern history of the city.The Great Cooper River Bridge provides the complete history of this architectural icon, exploring how early twentieth-century Charleston helped shape the bridge, and how the bridge subsequently shaped the city. With more than eighty photographs, this illustrated volume documents a remarkable engineering feat and a distinctive structure before it becomes a memory.

Potluck suppers with could-be relatives, junkets to exotic locales, and the importance of strangers in our livesIn Never in a Hurry the poet Naomi Shihab Nye resist the American inclination to "e;leave toward places when we barely had time enough to get there."e; Instead she travels the world at an observant pace, talking to strangers and introducing readers to an endearing assemblage of eccentric neighbors, Filipina faith healers, dry-cleaning proprietors, and other quirky characters.A Palestinian-American who lives in a Mexican-American neighborhood, Nye speaks for the mix of people and places that can be called the "e;American Experience."e; From St. Louis, the symbolic "e;Gateway to the West,"e; she embarks on a westward migration to examine America, past and present, and to glimpse into the lives of its latest outsiders-illegal immigrants from Mexico and troubled inner-city children. In other essays Nye ventures beyond North America's bounds, telling of a year in her childhood spent in Palestine and of an adulthood filled with cross-cultural quests. Whether recounting the purchase of a car on the island of Oahu or a camel-back ride through India's Thar Desert, Nye writes in wry, refreshing tones about themes that transcend borders and about the journey that remains the greatest of all-the journey from outside to in as the world enters each one of us, as we learn to see.

In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured-as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South.These firsthand accounts include the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot, a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston.Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike.These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress-and hope for the future.

The Southern Wildlife Watcher is a colorful look at thirty-six common and not-so-common animals found in the southeastern United States-from the hummingbird to the bald eagle and from the bullfrog to the bobcat. Rob Simbeck, one of the Southeast's most widely read naturalists, combines a poet's voice with a journalist's rigor in offering readers an intimate introduction to the creatures around us.Through delightful storytelling each vignette offers accessible information supported by quotes from noted naturalists and biologists. Simbeck covers habitat, diet, mating and reproduction, environmental challenges, and even folklore in outlining the lives of insects and other invertebrates, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, and fish. The Southern Wildlife Watcher is a refresher course and handbook for veteran nature lovers, an introduction for young readers, and fireplace or bedtime reading for those wanting to reflect on nature's bounty. A foreword is provided by Jim Casada, the author or editor of more than forty books and some five thousand magazine articles. He serves as editor at large for Sporting Classics magazine.

In the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida-territory under British control since the French and Indian War. In Patriots in Exile, James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors. McCrady and Bragg thoroughly examine the exile from the standpoint of the British who governed occupied Charleston, the families left behind, the armies in the field, the Continental Congress, and finally the Jacksonboro Assembly of January and February 1782. Using primary sources and archival materials, the authors develop biographical sketches of each exile and illuminate important facets of the American Revolution's southern theater. While they shared a common fate, the exiles were a diverse lot of tradesmen, artisans, prominent civilians, and military officers-among them three signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although they had clear socioeconomic differences, most were unrepentant patriots. In this first comprehensive examination and narrative history of these patriots, McCrady and Bragg reveal how the exiles navigated their new surroundings within the context of a revolutionary conflict that involved various imperial powers of the Old World-Britain, France, and Spain-and American colonists seeking to create an independent nation.

Beaufort, South Carolina, is well known for its historical architecture, but perhaps none is quite as remarkable as those edifices formed by tabby, sometimes called coastal concrete, comprising a mixture of lime, sand, water, and oyster shells. Tabby itself has a storied history stretching back to Iberian, Caribbean, Spanish American, and even African roots-brought to the United States by adventurers, merchants, military engineers, planters, and the enslaved.Tabby has been preserved most abundantly in the Beaufort area and its outlying islands, (and along the Sea Islands all the way to Florida as well) with Fort Frederick in 1734 having the earliest example of a diverse group of structures, which included town houses, seawalls, planters' homes, barns, agricultural buildings, and slave quarters. Tabby's insulating properties are excellent protection from long, hot, humid, and sometimes deadly summers; and on the islands, particularly, wealthy plantation owners built grand houses for themselves and improved dwellings for enslaved workers that after two hundred-plus years still stand today.An extraordinarily hardy material, tabby has a history akin to some of the world's oldest building techniques and is referred to as "e;rammed earth,"e; as well as "e; tapia"e; in Spanish, "e;pise de terre"e; in French, and "e;hangtu"e; in Chinese. The form that tabby construction took along the Sea Islands, however, was born of necessity. Here stone and brick were rare and expensive, but the oyster shells that were used as the source for the tabby's lime base were plentiful. Today these bits of shell, often visible in the walls and forms constructed long ago, give tabby its unique and iconic appearance.Colin Brooker, architect and expert on historic restoration, has not only made an exhaustive foray into local tabby architecture and heritage; he also has made a multinational tour as well in search of tabby origins, evolution, and diffusion from the Bahamas to Morocco to Andalusia, which can be traced back as far as the tenth century. Brooker has spent more than thirty years investigating the origins of tabby, its chemistry, its engineering, and its limitations. The Shell Builders lays out a sweeping, in-depth, and fascinating investigative journey-at once archaeological, sociological, and historical-into the ways prior inhabitants used and shaped their environment in order to house and protect themselves, leaving behind an architectural legacy that is both mysterious and beautiful.Lawrence S. Rowland, a distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and past president of the South Carolina Historical Society, provides a foreword.

The South Caroliniana Library, located on the historic Horseshoe of the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia, is one of the premier research archives and special collections repositories in South Carolina and the American Southeast. The library's holdings-manuscripts, published materials, university archives, and visual materials-are essential to understanding the Palmetto State and Southern culture as it has evolved over the past 300 years.When opened as the South Carolina College library in 1840 it was the first freestanding academic library building in the United States. Designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, it is built in the Greek Revival style and features a replica of the reading room that once housed Thomas Jefferson's personal library in the second Library of Congress. When the college built a larger main library (now known as the McKissick Museum) in 1940, the Mills building became the home of "e;Caroliniana"e;-published and unpublished materials relating to the history, literature, and culture of South Carolina.Through a dedicated mining of the resources this library has held, art historian John M. Bryan crafted this comprehensive narrative history of the building's design, construction, and renovations, which he enhanced with personal entries from the diaries and letters of the students, professors, librarians, and politicians who crossed its threshold. A treasure trove of Caroliniana itself, this colorful volume, featuring 95 photographs and illustrations, celebrates a beautiful and historic structure, as well as the rich and vibrant history of the Palmetto State and the dedicated citizenry who have worked so hard to preserve it.A foreword is provided by W. Eric Emerson, director, South Carolina Department of History and Archives.

The signs are there: our coastal cities are increasingly susceptible to flooding as the climate changes. Charleston, South Carolina, is no exception, and is one of the American cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Lowcountry at High Tide is the first book to deal with the topographic evolution of Charleston, its history of flooding from the seventeenth century to the present, and the efforts made to keep its populace high and dry, as well as safe and healthy.For centuries residents have made many attempts, both public and private, to manipulate the landscape of the low-lying peninsula on which Charleston sits, surrounded by wetlands, to maximize drainage, and thus buildable land and to facilitate sanitation. Christina Butler uses three hundred years of archival records to show not only the alterations to the landscape past and present, but also the impact those efforts have had on the residents at various socio-economic levels throughout its history.Wide-ranging and thorough, Lowcountry at High Tide goes beyond the documentation of reclamation and filling and offers a look into the life and the history of Charleston and how its people have been affected by its unique environment, as well as examining the responses of the city over time to the needs of the populace. Butler considers interdisciplinary topics from engineering to public health, infrastructure to class struggle, and urban planning to civic responsibility in a study that is not only invaluable to the people of Charleston, but for any coastal city grappling with environmental change.Illustrated with historical maps, plats, and photographs and organized chronologically and thematically within chapters, Lowcountry at High Tide offers a unique look at how Charleston has kept-and may continue to keep-the ocean at bay.