In their book, Reconstruction beyond 150: Reassessing the New Birth of Freedom, Vernon Burton and Brent Morris have brought together the best new scholarship, synthesizing social, political, economic, and cultural approaches to understanding a crucial period in our country’s history. They talk with us about how the their project came about, and about how many "reconstructions" our country has seen since the Civil War.

This week, we will be talking with Dr. Judith Bainbridge about her book, A Short History of Greenville (2024, USC Press). The book is a concise and engaging history that traces Greenville, SC's development from backcountry settlement to one of America's best small citiesIn our conversation with Judith we will concentrate the growth Greenville's textile industry and its demise, the economic decline of the city, and its rebirth as a haven for business and tourism in the twenty-first century.

In his new book, The Miraculous Art of Jazz, Benjamin Franklin V, Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of South Carolina, has gathered reviews of hundreds of recordings written over his 40-year career as a jazz writer.In our conversation his love for jazz and blues shines through. And the reviews he has collected in his book are as vital and important as ever – for listeners new to Jazz as well as long-time listeners who want to take a deeper dive into the music.

This week, we will be talking with J. Drew Lanham, about his new book, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024, Hub City Press). The book is a sensuous collection of Drew's signature mix of poetry and prose, a lush journey into wildness and Black being. Drew Lanham notices nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection and traces a path from bitter history to present predicaments, mining along the way the deep connection to ancestors through the living world.

This week on the Journal we will be talking with Alan Pell Crawford about his book, This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South (2024, Alfred A. Knopf). In his book Alan tells the story of three-plus years in the Revolutionary war, and of the fierce battles fought in the South that made up the central theater of military operations in the latter years of the War. And it was in these bloody battles that the British were, in essence, vanquished.

For centuries residents of Charleston, SC, 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. In her book, Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina (2020, USC Press), Christina Rae 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.In this encore of a broadcast conversation from 2020, Butler explores the ways in which Charleston has created land with Dr. Edgar, and they talk about challenges facing the city in the face of rising sea levels.