Reviewed by Sarah Burriss: Disrupted is hilarious and scary in equal measure. Dan Lyons, former technology editor of Newsweek, is summarily let go from his position after decades in journalism. Over 50 and professionally adrift, Lyons decides to hop on the start-up train and joins software company HubSpot. During a painful year, Lyons learns that it’s not a train so much as a dangerously precarious bubble he’s boarded.
S.C. Encyclopedia | She-crab soup is uniquely Charlestonian-a silky, seafood chowder with a European heritage.
The dish helped put Charleston on the regional culinary road map, as surely as Philadelphia’s cheese steaks or Chicago’s deep-dish pizzas. Shrimp and grits are perhaps the only items appearing more often on the menus of Charleston restaurants than this elegant appetizer.
S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina’s origins are so closely tied to the British West Indian colony of Barbados that it has been called a “Colony of a Colony.” The historian Jack Greene has called Barbados the “culture hearth” of the southeastern, slavery-dominated plantation economy. Surprisingly little is yet known of the origins of South Carolina’s early leaders. Although the Barbadian influence has probably been overstated and South Carolina’s plantation owners never became absentee landlords to the degree of the West Indian sugar planters, South Carolina did come to more closely resemble the West Indies than did any of the other English mainland colonies.
Reviewed by Helen Walker: “There are so many self-help and advice books out there that it is difficult to choose which one will actually help. Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is, introduces and explains “The Work,” a series of four questions that helped free Katie from her suffering.
Reviewed by Michel Hammes: The Secret Keeper, a novel by Kate Morton. The Secret Keeper is one of those hidden gems you can find when you peruse the library stacks.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Marian Wright Edelman was born on June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, the daughter of the Baptist minister Arthur Jerome Wright and Maggie Leola Bowen. She graduated from Marlboro Training High School in 1956; from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1960; and from Yale Law School in 1963.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The Battle of Sullivan’s Island was the first major patriot victory in the Revolutionary War. In February 1776, after British plans to capture Charleston were revealed, South Carolina patriots began construction of a fort on Sullivan’s Island close to the main shipping channel at the mouth of Charleston harbor. Colonel William Moultrie was given command of the island’s forces and ordered to supervise the fort’s construction.
Reviewed by Darryl Woods: The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, by Vivek J. Tiwary
Settling the debate, Paul McCartney once said “If anyone’s the fifth Beatle, it’s Brian Epstein.” This graphic novel explores, in vivid color, the life of the man who is the subject of the song “Baby, You’re a Rich Man.”
A poem by Pushcart nominee Katherine Williams of Charleston and Los Angeles. She has authored three chap books and given readings on both coasts. She has poems in Measure, Diagram, Spillway, Poemeleon, Rappahannock Review, and various anthologies. A community arts activist and surfer, she works in biomedical research and lives on James Island with her husband, poet Richard Garcia.
Reviewed by Jennifer Lively: Sarah Vowell’s latest work, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, published last fall, quickly found an audience among readers whose daily lives have been inundated with stories regarding the Founding Fathers. From the latest Broadway sensation, Hamilton, and talk of changing the face on the $20 bill, to patriotic bellows seeking to “make America great again,” the country’s revolutionary lore is seemingly at an all-time high.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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