Walter Edgar's Journal

(Originally broadcast 10/30/12) - In his book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera, Dr. Harvey H. Jackson III traces the development of the Florida-Alabama coast as a tourist destination from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was sparsely populated with "small fishing villages," through to the tragic and devastating BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Greenville Chautauqua has been performing educational interactive historical theater continuously since 1999. The group's administrator, Caroline McIntyre is our guest, along with local historian Judy Bainbridge and presenter Leslie Goddard. They will talk about this year's program, America at the Movies. Presenters will portray Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, Gordon Parks, and Walt Disney.

---All Stations: Fri, May 22, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 24, 4 pm--- (Originally broadcast 01/10/14) - In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with low rent, a faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square became the center of a vibrant but short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (LSU Press, 2012) John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.

----All Stations: Fri, May 15, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, May 18, 4 pm----

--- All Stations: Fri, Apr 10, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 12, 4 pm --- In his book, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (Free Press, 1992) John F. Marszalek presents general William Tecumseh Sherman as a complicated man who, fearing anarchy, searched for the order that he hoped would make his life a success.

- All Stations: Fri, Apr 3, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Apr 5, 4 pm -

- All Stations: Fri, Mar 27, 12 pm | News Stations: Sun, Mar 29, 4 pm -

The University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Humanities and Institute for Southern Studies concludes its series Conversations on the Civil War with a look back to 1865, the end of the war, the beginning of freedom for thousands of slaves, and the period of Reconstruction in the South.

(Note: this program was originally scheduled for 02/20/15)

Please Note: Conversations on the Civil War with guest Robert Brinkmeyer has been resheduled for next week.

- All Stations: Fri, Feb 13, 12:00 pm | News Stations: Sun, Feb 15, 4:00 pm -

Bryan Tayara and Dr. John Mark Dean share a passion for sustainable, locally caught seafood. Tayara is owner of Our Local Catch, and Dr. Dean is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Science and Ocean Policy with the University of South Carolina's Marine Science Program. They talk with Dr. Edgar about the state of South Carolina’s crabbers, fishermen, shrimpers, and other suppliers.

Dr. Mark M. Smith, of the University of South Carolina, returns to The Journal to talk about his book The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2014). No other book has looked at the Civil War through the prism of the five senses, or considered their impact on various groups of indviduals. Smith is widely considered America's leading practitioner of the new and burgeoning field of "sensory history." Using engaging accounts from diaries, letters, and journals Smith gives readers a first-hand glimpse of the experience of the Civil War.

Bestselling author Ron Rash returns to Walter Edgar’s Journal to talk about his life and work. He’ll also tell Dr. Edgar about The Ron Rash Reader (USC Press, 2014), the 20th anniversary edition of The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth (USC Press, 2014) as well as his collection entitled Something Rich and Strange (Harper Collins, 2014). And he’ll talk about co-writing the screenplay for the upcoming movie Serena (March, 2015), starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and based on Rash’s 2008 bestselling novel.

With the passing of former South Carolina Governor James B. Edwards, on December 26, 2014, Walter Edgar's Journal offers an encore of a conversation between Dr. Edgar and the Governor, which first aired in October of 2004.

-Walter Edgar's Journal- Greenville's downtown is widely recognized as one of the best in America. In Reimagining Greenville: Building the Best Downtown in America (The History Press, 2013), authors John Boyanoski and Mayor Knox White tell the story of the careful, deliberate efforts by city and community leaders who banded together to build something special from a decaying city center. Mayor White joins Walter Edgar to share some of this story.

Novelist Sharyn McCrumb talks with Dr. Edgar about her new book Nora Bonesteel’s Christmas Past (2014, Abingdon Press) When someone buys the old Honeycutt house, Nora Bonesteel is glad to see some life brought back to the old mansion, even if it is by summer people. But when the new owners decide to stay in their summer home through Christmas, they find more than old memories in the walls. Nora agrees to help sort things out, and is drawn into a time and place she never expected to revisit.

A product of the industrialized New South, Eugene Healan Thomason (1895–1972) made the obligatory pilgrimage to New York to advance his art education and launch his career. Like so many other aspiring American artists, he understood that the city offered unparalleled personal and professional opportunities for a promising young painter in the early 1920s. Thomason returned to the South in the early 1930s, living first in Charlotte, North Carolina, before settling in a small Appalachian crossroads called Nebo. For the next thirty-plus years, he mined the rural landscape's rolling terrain and area residents for inspiration. Eugene Thomason embraced and convincingly portrayed his own region, becoming the visual spokesman for that place and its people.

In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court made it's landmark ruling to end segregation in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Fifty years on, Dr. Jon N. Hale, of the College of Charleston, and Dr. Millicent E. Brown, of Claflin University, join Dr. Edgar to talk about the road to school desegregation and civil rights in South Carolina.

Rep. James Clyburn drops by to talk with Walter Edgar about his life and career, and about writing his autobiography, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black.