Walter Edgar's Journal

This week we’ll be talking with Betsy Teter, author of A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg (2026, Hub City Press).

Her book uncovers a piece of lost history – accounts of which were lost when a fire destroyed the downtown offices of Spartanburg’s daily newspapers, taking with it copies of the publications that had chronicled the city for decades. Besty has dug into the archives of other South Carolina newspapers to piece together a narrative that is both informative and gripping.

Through ten interconnected true-crime stories, her historical account captures a South Carolina county’s most violent decade – a time when bullets felled a mayor, a police chief, and a beloved bookseller, each in separate shocking incidents.

This week we'll be talking with Dr. Kevin Kokomoor of Coastal Carolina University about his new book, The Cherokee War of 1776: Native Destruction at the Dawn of American Independence (2026, John Hopkins University Press).

Americans remember 1776 as the year liberty was declared, the moment they cast off tyranny and proclaimed the self-evident truths of equality and freedom. But that same summer, as patriots celebrated their defiant new nation, American armies launched another campaign—this one aimed at destroying the Cherokee nation.

In The Cherokee War of 1776, Kevin Kokomoor recasts America's founding moment by tracing the importance of westward ambition and settler violence to the origins of the Revolutionary War. And he uncovers the rarely acknowledged war waged by the emerging United States against the Cherokee people just days after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Far from a spontaneous frontier skirmish, this war was a coordinated, state-backed campaign with a clear aim: seize Indigenous land and crush Native resistance. 

This week we will be talking with Carl McNair, brother of the late Dr. Ronald McNair, NASA astronaut and Lake City, South Carolina, native. Ron McNair’s story is told in the four-part series, Once Upon a Time in Space, currently streaming on PBS and ETV Passport. 

Ron McNair’s story is singular: he grew up in a segregated South Carolina and went on to earn a PHD in physics. With the beginning of space shuttle program, NASA chose 35 applicants from a pool of over 10,000 astronaut candidates. In 1984 he became the second African American in space. Though he lost his life in the Challenger disaster in 1986, his story continues to inspire generations of young South Carolinians who want to reach for the stars.

With every growing season, the South is in danger of losing an ingredient that’s shaped our state’s flavor, history, and culture. This week, we will be talking with Chef Kevin Mitchell and food historian David Shields, hosts of the SCETV and PBS series The Savers of Flavor about their ongoing search for the vanishing ingredients of Southern cuisine. Over the course of four episodes David and Kevin embark on a quest to seek out and rescue those ingredients before they are lost forever.

This week Walter will talk with historian Albert Louis Zambone about Revolutionary War hero Daniel Morgan.

On January 17, 1781, at Cowpens, South Carolina, the notorious British cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton and his legion were destroyed along with the cream of Lord Cornwallis’s troops. The man who planned and executed this stunning American victory was Daniel Morgan. Once a barely literate backcountry laborer, Morgan now stood at the pinnacle of American martial success. 

In his book Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life (2018, Westholme Publishing) the first biography of this iconic figure in forty years, historian Albert Zambone presents Morgan as the quintessential American everyman, who rose through his own dogged determination from poverty and obscurity to become one of the great battlefield commanders in American history. Using social history and other advances in the discipline that had not been available to earlier biographers, the author provides an engrossing portrait of this storied per­sonality of America’s founding era—a common man in uncommon times.

This week we’ll be talking with Charleston author James M. Scott, author of Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War (2026, W.W. Norton & Company). With startling immediacy, Empire of Ashes illuminates the moral dilemma at the center of America’s decision to inflict total war upon Japan. 

A thorough historian and a talented writer Scott brings to life the struggles – moral, scientific, and practical - faced by the Truman administration in the closing days of World War II.

This week we will be talking with Carl P. Borick, author of Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina's Militia and the Fight for American Independence (2026, USC Press).

As the title indicates, Carl’s book focuses on rank-and-file militiamen of the backcountry and explores how these ordinary men were recruited, armed, fed, and motivated.

Drawing on underused pension records and state claims, he reconstructs their everyday realities and their battlefield experiences. He also examines the war's devastating effects on civilians, including enslaved people and women, who played crucial roles in the struggle.

This week we are recording in front of a live audience at part of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio’s America 250 celebration. Our guests are Gen. Will Grimsley, Chair of the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC250); and Molly Fortune, Chief Executive Officer, of SC250.

Among the topics we’ll be covering today are South Carolina's role in the American Revolution, the work and mission of the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission, statewide commemorations and initiatives surrounding America's 250th anniversary, and historical perspectives and stories from South Carolina's Revolutionary era.

Today's episode was recorded July 1, 2026.

This week we will be talking with Nathan Spainhour, author of The South Carolina BBQ Project (2025, Good Printed Things). Nathan is a designer and educator whose work explores the relationship between design, place, and cultural narrative.

His book began as his MFA thesis in Graphic Design and has since evolved into an ongoing documentation of barbecue’s visual culture – from signage and typography to architecture and everyday ephemera – situated within the broader history of Southern foodways. The South Carolina BBQ Project is a lot of fun. Part history, part design study, and part love letter to the state’s most treasured foodway, the book explores the culture of barbecue across the Palmetto state.

This week our guest will be novelist Brian Thiem, from Hilton Head Island, and we'll be talking about his series of novels about the Mudflats Murder Club.

Brian draws from his experience as a former detective and cold case investigator, to craft suspenseful stories set on the fictional Spartina Island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. His latest book in the series is A Killer in the Cordgrass (2026, Severn River Publishing/Simon and Schuster).