Blue Bicycle Books

Against the odds, our writing camps are off and running this year. Session 1, for grades 3 – 6, was in the airy and spacious sanctuary of Bright City Church — thank you to Nick and Jess Connolly for generously donating use of this space.

This week’s session (and the two following) are Write of Zoom-er Virtual Camps, led by Sara Peck. Each student gets this killer care package (above) delivered to their doorstep Sunday night, with t-shirts, snacks and special secret envelopes to be opened each day.

Thanks to author Brendan Reichs — who joined Session 2 via zoom and donated copies of his and Ally Condie’s awesome middle grade series The Darkdeep. 

Margaret Stohl — video game and comic book writer / YALLFest co-founder / author of many books including the recent Jo and Laurie — will join this week!

Space available in most sessions. For more information see writeofsummer.com, and please call Jonathan any time at 843-323-2834, he’s always happy to talk about camp!

We have partnered with local restaurant Verde and renowned gastroenterologist Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, better known as Dr. B, to share his new book Fiber Fueled (Avery, hb., 400 pp., $27). Dr. B’s groundbreaking book offers a plant-based gut health program for losing weight, restoring health, and optimizing your microbiome.

Including a 28-day jumpstart program with menus and more than 65 unique recipes, along with essential advice on food sensitivities, Fiber Fueled offers the blueprint to start resetting your gut for lifelong health today.

Verde has brought Dr. B’s rules to life with their new Somewhere Over the Rainbowl, a salad packed with vibrant colors, nutrients, and a diversity of plants available at all Verde locations. Plus, each bowl comes with a bookmark with a special link for an exclusive signed copy. Additionally, you can order signed copies right here.

Join us Tues., Feb 25, 5 pm for Jane Kleeb, chair of the Democratic Party of Nebraska, as she talks about her new book Harvest the Vote (Ecco, hb, 224 pp., $26.99) before the SC Democratic debate.

The Democratic Party has lost an entire generation of rural voters. By focusing the majority of their message and resources on urban and coastal voters, Democrats have sacrificed entire regions of the country where there is more common ground and shared values than what appears on the surface.

In Harvest the Vote, Jane Kleeb brings us a lively and sweeping argument for why the Democrats shouldn’t turn away from rural America. As a party leader and longtime activist, Kleeb speaks from experience. She’s been fighting the national party for more resources and building a grassroots movement to flex the power of a voting bloc that has long been ignored and forgotten.

Jane Kleeb is an American political activist. She is the founder and president of Bold Alliance, Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and a board member of Our Revolution and Matriarch PAC. She lives in Hastings, Nebraska with her husband Scott Kleeb and their three daughters.

Join us Thurs., Mar. 5, 5:30 pm as College of Charleston professor Dr. Adam H. Domby will be here to discuss his book The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (UVA Press, hb., 272 pp., $30).

The Lost Cause ideology that emerged after the Civil War and flourished in the early twentieth century in essence sought to recast a struggle to perpetuate slavery as a heroic defense of the South. As Adam Domby reveals here, this was not only an insidious goal; it was founded on falsehoods. The False Cause focuses on North Carolina to examine the role of lies and exaggeration in the creation of the Lost Cause narrative. In the process the book shows how these lies have long obscured the past and been used to buttress white supremacy in ways that resonate to this day.

Domby explores how fabricated narratives about the war’s cause, Reconstruction, and slavery―as expounded at monument dedications and political rallies―were crucial to Jim Crow. He questions the persistent myth of the Confederate army as one of history’s greatest, revealing a convenient disregard of deserters, dissent, and Unionism, and exposes how pension fraud facilitated a myth of unwavering support of the Confederacy among nearly all white Southerners. Domby shows how the dubious concept of “black Confederates” was spun from a small number of elderly and indigent African American North Carolinians who got pensions by presenting themselves as “loyal slaves.” The book concludes with a penetrating examination of how the Lost Cause narrative and the lies on which it is based continue to haunt the country today and still work to maintain racial inequality.

Adam H. Domby is Assistant Professor of History at the College of Charleston.

Thurs., Feb. 27, at 5:30, help us celebrate the release of local nonprofit Enough Pie‘s book, Tales from the Manor, a counterpart to their popular podcast of the same title.

Enough Pie’s mission is to use creativity to connect and empower the community in Charleston’s Upper Peninsula. With this mission at its heart, Tales from the Manor discovers and projects the stories from residents of Joseph Floyd Manor, a twelve-story building on Upper King that serves low-income, elderly, and disabled residents, creating in the process, a dynamic and oft-overlooked history of Charleston. More than 5,000 listeners have enjoyed the radio show and podcast, and the goal of the book is to get these important stories out even wider. The book features the complete interviews from each show (10 episodes), photographs of the residents by local photographer Vintage Noir, and opening and closing chapters from the show’s hosts, Summer Anderson and Jae Smith and Enough Pie’s project lead Bennett Jones.