Books published by publisher University of South Carolina Press

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.--New York Times Book Review "During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.--William and Mary Quarterly"[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the Revolutionary generation.--New England Quarterly"This is an admirable, thoughtful, and penetrating study of one of the most important chapters in American history.--Wesley Frank Craven

Three Wild Pigs: A Carolina Folktale, written and illustrated by Lisa Anne Cullen, is an adaptation of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps's The Story of the Three Little Pigs. Set on Bird Island along the Carolina Coast, this creative retelling of the timeless tale features three generations of a pig family―Lulu, her father, and her grandfather.On the island Lulu is known for being wise in the ways of the world. Pop is wise in the ways of the waters. Grandpaw Curly, the oldest and smartest pig of all, is wise in the ways of the winds. While shrimping in the Atlantic Ocean, the pigs experience harsh winds and see ominous clouds. Knowing these are warning signs of impending bad weather, they row home. Before long a whirling, swirling, huffing-and-puffing Hurricane Wolf arrives to wreak havoc on the pigs, their homes, and Bird Island. Cullen's colorful illustrations mirror the weather, flora, and fauna of the Carolina coast. Three Wild Pigs features maps of North and South Carolina as well as select state symbols and will educate, entertain, and enlighten early readers and listeners of all ages as Lulu, Pop, and Grandpaw Curly struggle to survive Hurricane Wolf.

Phoning Home is a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays featuring the author’s quirky family, his Jewish heritage, and his New York City upbringing. Jacob M. Appel’s recollections and insights, informed and filtered by his advanced degrees in medicine, law, and ethics, not only inspire nostalgic feelings but also offer insight into contemporary medical and ethical issues.At times sardonic and at others self-deprecating, Appel lays bare the most private aspects of his emotional life. “We’d just visited my grandaunt in Miami Beach, the last time we would ever see her. I had my two travel companions, Fat and Thin, securely buckled into the backseat of my mother’s foul-tempered Dodge Dart,” writes Appel of his family vacation with his two favorite rubber cat toys. Shortly thereafter Fat and Thin were lost forever—beginning, when Appel was just six years old, what he calls his “private apocalypse.”Both erudite and full-hearted, Appel recounts storylines ranging from a bout of unrequited love gone awry to the poignant romance of his grandparents. We learn of the crank phone calls he made to his own family, the conspicuous absence of Jell-O at his grandaunt’s house, and family secrets long believed buried. The stories range from the humorous to the poignant and capture the author’s distinctive voice—a blend of a physician’s compassion and an ethicist’s constant questioning.

An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work—Non FictionJames Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, "He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died." A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's "onions done in the Brazilian way" for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

Operating in the vast and varied trans-Appalachian west, the Army of Tennessee was crucially important to the military fate of the Confederacy. But under the principal leadership of generals such as Braxton Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston, and John Bell Hood, it won few major battles, and many regard its inability to halt steady Union advances into the Confederate heartland as a matter of failed leadership. Here, esteemed military historian Larry J. Daniel offers a far richer interpretation. Surpassing previous work that has focused on questions of command structure and the force's fate on the fields of battle, Daniel provides the clearest view to date of the army's inner workings, from top-level command and unit cohesion to the varied experiences of common soldiers and their connections to the home front. Drawing from his mastery of the relevant sources, Daniel's book is a thought-provoking reassessment of an army's fate, with important implications for Civil War history and military history writ large.

Set in early 1950s rural South Carolina, One Good Mama Bone chronicles Sarah Creamer's quest to find her "mama bone," after she is left to care for a boy who is not her own but instead is the product of an affair between her husband and her best friend and neighbor, a woman she calls "Sister." When her husband drinks himself to death, Sarah, a dirt-poor homemaker with no family to rely on and the note on the farm long past due, must find a way for her and young Emerson Bridge to survive. But the more daunting obstacle is Sarah's fear that her mother's words, seared in her memory since she first heard them at the age of six, were a prophesy, "You ain't got you one good mama bone in you, girl."When Sarah reads in the local newspaper that a boy won $680 with his Grand Champion steer at the recent 1951 Fat Cattle Show & Sale, she sees this as their financial salvation and finds a way to get Emerson Bridge a steer from a local farmer to compete in the 1952 show. But the young calf is unsettled at Sarah's farm, crying out in distress and growing louder as the night wears on. Some four miles away, the steer's mother hears his cries and breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to go in search of him. The next morning Sarah finds the young steer quiet, content, and nursing a large cow. Inspired by the mother cow's act of love, Sarah names her Mama Red. And so Sarah's education in motherhood begins with Mama Red as her teacher. But Luther Dobbins, the man who sold Sarah the steer, has his sights set on winning too, and, like Sarah, he is desperate, but not for money. Dobbins is desperate for glory, wanting to regain his lost grand-champion dynasty, and he will stop at nothing to win. Emboldened by her lessons from Mama Red and her budding mama bone, Sarah is committed to victory even after she learns the winning steer's ultimate fate. Will she stop at nothing, even if it means betraying her teacher?McClain's writing is distinguished by a sophisticated and detailed portrayal of the day-to-day realities of rural poverty and an authentic sense of time and place that marks the best southern fiction. Her characters transcend their archetypes and her animal-as-teacher theme recalls the likes of Water for Elephants and The Art of Racing in the Rain. One Good Mama Bone explores the strengths and limitations of parental love, the healing power of the human-animal bond, and the ethical dilemmas of raising animals for food.

The Battle of Eutaw Springs took place on September 8, 1781, and was among the last in the War of Independence. It was brutal in its combat and reprisals, with Continental and Whig militia fighting British regulars and Loyalist regiments. Although its outcome was seemingly inconclusive, the battle, fought near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, contained all the elements that defined the war in the South. In Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution’s Southern Campaign, Robert M. Dunkerly and Irene B. Boland tell the story of this lesser known and under-studied battle of the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaign. Shrouded in myth and misconception, the battle has also been overshadowed by the surrender of YorktownEutaw Springs represented lost opportunities for both armies. The American forces were desperate for a victory in 1781, and Gen. Nathanael Greene finally had the ground of his own choosing. British forces under Col. Alexander Stewart were equally determined to keep a solid grip on the territory they still held in the South Carolina lowcountry.In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly 20 percent of its soldiers. Neither side won the hard-fought battle, and controversies plagued both sides in the aftermath. Dunkerly and Boland analyze the engagement and its significance within the context of the war’s closing months, study the area’s geology and setting, and recount the action using primary sources, aided by recent archaeology.

Monumental in scope and vividly detailed, Chocolate City tells the tumultuous, four-century story of race and democracy in our nation's capital. Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between America's expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification. But D.C. is more than just a seat of government, and authors Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove also highlight the city's rich history of local activism as Washingtonians of all races have struggled to make their voices heard in an undemocratic city where residents lack full political rights.Tracing D.C.'s massive transformations--from a sparsely inhabited plantation society into a diverse metropolis, from a center of the slave trade to the nation's first black-majority city, from "Chocolate City" to "Latte City--Asch and Musgrove offer an engaging narrative peppered with unforgettable characters, a history of deep racial division but also one of hope, resilience, and interracial cooperation.

At dawn on September 22, 1711, more than 500 Tuscarora, Core, Neuse, Pamlico, Weetock, Machapunga, and Bear River Indian warriors swept down on the unsuspecting European settlers living along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers of North Carolina. Over the following days, they destroyed hundreds of farms, killed at least 140 men, women, and children, and took about 40 captives. So began the Tuscarora War, North Carolina's bloodiest colonial war and surely one of its most brutal. In his gripping account, David La Vere examines the war through the lens of key players in the conflict, reveals the events that led to it, and traces its far-reaching consequences.La Vere details the innovative fortifications produced by the Tuscaroras, chronicles the colony's new practice of enslaving all captives and selling them out of country, and shows how both sides drew support from forces far outside the colony's borders. In these ways and others, La Vere concludes, this merciless war pointed a new direction in the development of the future state of North Carolina.

When Art and his friends―Robbie, Jason, and Amy―are having a sleepover, they decide to use Art's telescope for some stargazing. They are shocked to see a purple spaceship hurtling toward Earth. While his parents think his imagination is getting the best of him, Art thinks Earth is at risk of an alien invasion. What should he do? Should Art and his fellow science detectives alert the authorities, or should they take matters into their own hands? When the local police don't seem concerned about Art's report, the kids decide to apply their knowledge of science and critical thinking skills to prepare for the impending attack. They need a plan―and fast! What transpires as they gear up for the spaceship's arrival will amuse and educate. Art Smart, Science Detective will appeal to budding scientists and even reluctant young readers as it answers burning questions such as "How close is science fiction to real life?" and "Can peanut butter really keep your brain safe from an alien assault?" This entertaining journey through the science of the sky is easily incorporated into middle-grade science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics courses.

Harry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because the Potter series both breaks new ground and adheres to longstanding narrative formulas, readers can enhance their enjoyment of these epic adventures by better understanding their place in literary history.Along with the seven foundational novels of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and Beyond assesses the extraordinary range of supplementary material concerning the young wizard and his allies, including the films of the books, the subsequent film series of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the theatrical spectacle Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and a range of other Potter-inspired narratives. Beyond the world of Potter, Pugh surveys Rowling's literary fiction The Casual Vacancy and her detective series featuring Cormoran Strike, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Through this comprehensive overview of Rowling's body of work, Pugh reveals the vast web of connections between yesteryear's stories and Rowling's vivid creations.

Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men, but boys, many of whom were under the age of sixteen, and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service. Giving us a rich and unique glimpse into colonial childhood, Cox traces the evolution of youth in American culture in the late eighteenth century, as the accepted age for children to participate meaningfully in society--not only in the military--was rising dramatically.Drawing creatively on sources, such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, Caroline Cox offers a vivid account of what life was like for these boys both on and off the battlefield, telling the story of a generation of soldiers caught between old and new notions of boyhood.