Charleston Curiosities: Stories of the Tragic, Heroic, and Bizarre

Charleston Curiosities: Stories of the Tragic, Heroic, and Bizarre
Author: Michael Coker
Publisher: History Press Library Editions
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2008-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781540218971

To escape death the slaves hid. So begins Insurrection on the Stono, the story of a 1739 slave rebellion on the outskirts of the city. Charleston s violent and varied history emerges in the retelling of this dramatic event. In Charleston Curiosities: Stories of the Tragic, Heroic and Bizarre, South Carolina Historical Society s Michael Coker describes several centuries worth of little-known wonders from the Holy City. Whatever happened to Osceola s head? What was it like to walk the streets of Charleston just after secession was declared? Whether presenting the colonial struggle among European powers for control of Charles Towne or the real story of the birth of she-crab soup, this eclectic and engaging volume will delight seasoned historians, residents and visitors alike."

Arsenal of History

Arsenal of History
Author: R. Alan Stello Jr.
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614238677

The Powder Magazine was completed circa 1713 as an arsenal to safely store munitions in the South Carolina colonial capital of Charles Town, serving continuously in defense through the 1740s and periodically until the 1820s. Rescued from destruction in 1902, the building has served as a museum for more than a century, inspiring countless other historic conservation efforts. Museum Director Alan Stello presents the story of the state's oldest public building by establishing connections between the arsenal and the significant episodes it has witnessed. Readers will enjoy an introductory look at South Carolina colonial military history while gaining an appreciation for this icon of history and preservation.

Hidden History of Old Charleston

Hidden History of Old Charleston
Author: Margaret Middleton Rivers Eastman
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1614235317

From the Lowcountry's first recorded duel to old-fashioned summers at the 'hottest spot in town", these pages will captivate you with stories of people, events and places that have all but vanished from memory. Find out the real history behind some of Charleston's beloved mansions and learn about the early plantations and their owners. Join the authors as they relate the riots and romance, the preservation and politics - and even a ghost story - from Charleston's hidden history.

South of Broad

South of Broad
Author: Pat Conroy
Publisher: Dial Press
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2009-08-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385532148

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for. Spanning two turbulent decades, South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest: a masterpiece from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. Praise for South of Broad “Vintage Pat Conroy . . . a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage.”—The Washington Post “Conroy remains a magician of the page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Richly imagined . . . These characters are gallant in the grand old-fashioned sense, devoted to one another and to home. That siren song of place has never sounded so sweet.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “A lavish, no-holds-barred performance.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A lovely, often thrilling story.”—The Dallas Morning News “A pleasure to read . . . a must for Conroy’s fans.”—Associated Press

How God Ends Us

How God Ends Us
Author: DéLana R. A. Dameron
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2009
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781570038327

The author searches for answers to spiritual quandaries in this collection of poems. Her poems form a lyrical conversation with an ominous and omnipotent deity, one who controls all matters of the living earth, including death and destruction. Her acknowledgement of the breadth of this power under divine jurisdiction moves her by turns to anger, grief, celebration, and even joy. From personal to collective to imagined histories, these poems explore essential, perennial questions emblemized by natural disasters, family struggles, racism, and the experiences of travel abroad.

Liberty's Exiles

Liberty's Exiles
Author: Maya Jasanoff
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2012-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400075475

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 981
Release: 1991-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 019974369X

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.