With nearly 2,000 entries and 520 illustrations, this comprehensive reference surveys the history and culture of the Palmetto State from A to Z, mountains to coast, and prehistory to the present.

New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion

Encyclopedia of South Carolina Indians details the history, biographies and treaties of Native American tribes living in South Carolina and the surrounding regions.

Palmetto Profiles documents the lives and accomplishments of the inductees of the South Carolina Hall of Fame during its first forty years. As Governor John C. West predicted in his dedication speech, the Hall of Fame has indeed become a "vital and integral part of the history and culture of South Carolina." Nearly ninety citizens have been inducted since Apollo 16 astronaut Colonel Charles Duke, Jr., became the first honoree in 1973. Each year one contemporary and one deceased individual is recognized by the hall for outstanding contributions to South Carolina's heritage and progress. To date, inductees have included political leaders and reformers, artists, writers, scientists, soldiers, clergy, educators, athletes, and others. U.S. president Andrew Jackson, authors Elizabeth Coker and Pat Conroy, jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, artists Jasper Johns and Elizabeth O'Neil Verner, Catawba King Hagler, Generals Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter, civil rights leaders Mary McLeod Bethune and Reverend Benjamin E. Mays, U.S. senators J. Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings, and Nobel Prize winning physicist Charles H. Townes are just some of the representative South Carolinians memorialized in the Hall of Fame for their lasting legacies in the Palmetto State and beyond. Published on the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the South Carolina Hall of Fame and drawn from biographical entries in The South Carolina Encyclopedia, this guidebook presents concise profiles of the inductees from 1973 to 2013. Palmetto Profiles, like the Hall of Fame itself, serves as a tangible link to South Carolina's rich and complex past to the benefit of residents, visitors, and students alike. The volume also includes illustrations of all inductees and a foreword by Walter Edgar, a 2008 Hall of Fame inductee, author of South Carolina: A History, and editor of The South Carolina Encyclopedia.

This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture addresses the cultural, social, and intellectual terrain of myth, manners, and historical memory in the American South. Evaluating how a distinct southern identity has been created, recreated, and performed through memories that blur the line between fact and fiction, this volume paints a broad, multihued picture of the region seen through the lenses of belief and cultural practice. The 95 entries here represent a substantial revision and expansion of the material on historical memory and manners in the original edition. They address such matters as myths and memories surrounding the Old South and the Civil War; stereotypes and traditions related to the body, sexuality, gender, and family (such as debutante balls and beauty pageants); institutions and places associated with historical memory (such as cemeteries, monuments, and museums); and specific subjects and objects of myths, including the Confederate flag and Graceland. Together, they offer a compelling portrait of the "southern way of life" as it has been imagined, lived, and contested.

The location of "the South" is hardly a settled or static geographic concept. Culturally speaking, are Florida and Arkansas really part of the same region? Is Texas considered part of the South or the West? This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture grapples with the contestable issue of where the cultural South is located, both on maps and in the minds of Americans. Richard Pillsbury's introductory essay explores the evolution of geographic patterns of life within the region--agricultural practices, urban patterns, residential buildings, religious preferences, foodways, and language. The entries that follow address general topics of cultural geographic interest, such as Appalachia, exiles and expatriates, Latino and Jewish populations, migration patterns, and the profound Disneyfication of central Florida. Entries with a more concentrated focus examine major cities, such as Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis; the influence of black and white southern migrants on northern cities; and individual subregions, such as the Piedmont, Piney Woods, Tidewater, and Delta. Putting together the disparate pieces that make up the place called "the South," this volume sets the scene for the discussions in all the other volumes of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Originally published in 1992, South Carolina in the Modern Age was the first history of contemporary South Carolina to appear in more than a quarter century and helped establish the reputation of the Palmetto State's premier historian, Walter Edgar, who had not yet begun the two landmark volumes—South Carolina: A History and The South Carolina Encyclopedia—that also bear his name. Available once again, this illustrated volume chronicles transformational events in South Carolina as the state emerged from the devastation that followed the Civil War and progressed through the challenges of the twentieth century. After the Civil War, South Carolina virtually disappeared from the national consciousness and became a historical backwater. But as the nation began to look to the twentieth century, South Carolina stirred once again. It took a world war, the U.S. Supreme Court, and strong-willed leadership to place South Carolina once more within the American mainstream. Edgar has divided this text into four essays, each covering a quarter century of South Carolina history. Each essay has a particular focus: South Carolina's hectic political scene (1891-1916); a period of economic stagnation during which the myths of the state's glorious past were honed and polished (1916-41); the impetus that World War II gave to economic development (1941-66); and social changes wrought by urbanization, industrial development, and desegregation (1966-91). South Carolina in the Modern Age also includes a chronology of state history and a list of suggested readings. More than seventy illustrations, many previously unpublished, add a visual dimension to the story.