iterary South Carolina (Hub City Writers Project, 2004) by Edwin C. Epps ’70C is a wide-ranging history and reference book that encompasses the lives and works of more than three hundred Palmetto State writers. “The sum total of my nearly fifty years’ acquaintance with South Carolina literature,” Epps writes in his preface, “has been many hours of absolutely delightful late-night, squinty-eyed perusal of a surprisingly wide variety of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalistic reportage, confession, and historic reflection.”

Journalist Mike Sager ’78C has collected nineteen stories from his career as a writer for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and GQ under the title Scary Monsters and Super Freaks (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004). His subjects range from disgraced congressman Gary Condit to Pulitzer fabulist Janet Cooke and bad-boy actor Rob Lowe. David Granger, editor-in-chief of Esquire, says, “There are no magazine writers like Sager. His stories take you to places you didn’t necessarily want to go. But after you’ve been there . . . you can’t wait to head to the next Sager destination.”

Born in Nigeria in 1954, Elaine Neil Orr ’85PhD has written a memoir of her childhood and adolescence in Africa, Gods of Noonday (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Reviewer William Boyd writes, “Deeply thoughtful, candid, and unsentimental, [Gods of Noonday] explores with great sensitivity and understanding the rare blessing of this most extraordinary and enriching of childhoods. A classic of its kind.”

Elizabeth S. D. Englehardt ’99PhD examines how the work of four women writers formed a distinctive literature of gender and place in The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature (Ohio University Press, 2004). An assistant professor of women’s studies at West Virginia University, Englehardt previously was the editor of The Power and the Glory: An Appalachian Novel by Grace MacGowan Cooke, and was a contributing author in Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food.

As a divorced boomer married to another divorced boomer, attorney Marlene M. Browne ’86L writes about what she knows in the Boomer’s Guide to Divorce–and a New Life (Alpha Books, 2004). The guide is intended to help with the logistics of a mid-life marital breakup, and includes sections on division of property, alimony, and child custody, interspersed with quotes from celebrities and cultural icons whose marriages went bust.

The best-known short fiction of novelist and screenwriter Jameson Currier ’77C is collected in Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex (Green Candy Press, 2004), along with several new stories that meticulously detail the search for love, romance, and partnership between gay men. Currier’s characteristically spare prose brings into sharp relief the sometimes maddening traits that constitute a person’s romantic ideal and show how the quest for a meaningful relationship can transform–or derail–the course of our lives. Currier is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and has written for such publications as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review.

Julian Rubinstein ’91C is the author of Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts (Little, Brown, 2004), the “hysterically funny and heartbreaking” story of Attila Ambrus, “a gentleman thief, a sort of Cary Grant–if only Cary Grant came from Transylvania, was a terrible professional hockey goaltender, and preferred women in six-inch platform heels.” Reviewer Frank DeFord writes, “A wonderful saga of Hungarian cops and robbers, where if crime doesnt’ pay, it at least beats playing hockey goalie.”

Edward H. Sims ’47G “examines the tragic course of relations between the leading continental power in Europe and the world’s greatest democracy in the twentieth century” in The German American Tragedy (Editor’s Copy Syndicate, 2004).

In A Bridge Not Attacked (World Scientific Publishing, 2004), Harold Johnston ’41C details the work of highly talented civilians who were carrying out research on poison gases during World War II. Johnston is best known for his opposition to the United States’ planned fleet of supersonic transports in the 1970s, based on their impact on the global ozone layer. His research led to the establishment of the first major program of stratospheric research, the Climatic Impact Assessment Program.

Jews, Turks, and Other Strangers: The Roots of Prejudice in Modern Germany (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), by Jerome P. Legge Jr. ’75PhD is “a well-written analysis of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in contemporary Germany, presenting findings that challenge prevalent stereotypes.”

Werner E. Wortsman ’47C is the author of Toccata & Fugue (Xlibris, 2002), which delves into both the American and German sides of World War II, and Viscosity (Xlibris, 2000), the story of a young Southern Appalachian woman who is trying to escape a childhood and youth spent in a primitive family in northwest Georgia.

In Clerical Failure: Ten Stupid Things Clergy Do to Mess Up Your Church (Unlimited Publishing, 2004), Donald D. Hook ’50C “draws on history, linguistics and personal experience in several Christian faiths to argue that many clergy today are too weak to stem eroding core-religious values.”