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Vol. XXVII, No. 2 133 ments the text. Although this work is supported by a useful, detailed 14 page index, bibliographic support is limited to interview references. The more inquisitive reader is referred to two technical reports prepared by the same authors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Historic Settlement in the Upper Tombigbee Valley (1981) and Historical Geography of the Upper Tombigbee Valley (1982). Tenn-Tom Country is an effective historical geography that admirably fulfills the authors' stated objectives. It belongs on the shelf of every scholar who has an interest in the South. Doubtless it will become one of the baseline surveys against which future impacts of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway may be gauged. Walter Martin, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223. South Carolina: A Geography. Charles F. Kovacik andJohn J. Winberry. Boulder: Westview Press, 1987. xviii and 235 pp., maps, photographs, tables, bibliography and index. $45.00 cloth (ISBN-0-89158-987-2) South Carolina: A Geography is the twelfth of thirteen monographs which comprise the Geographies of the United States series from Westview Press. Never intended to encompass all fifty states, the series offers somewhat regionally-grouped selections from New Jersey to Hawaii. Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey make up entries from the Northeast; Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin represent the Midwest. A forthcoming and final volume on Louisiana will join South Carolina and Texas as entries from the South. Works on Colorado and Hawaii stand as singular departures from the regional clusters. South Carolina is a credit to the collection, an addition which contributes more than its share to the quality of the series. Attention to detail and careful explanation are woven into a highly readable text that presents South Carolina before a broad audience. Kovacik and Winberry employ Sauer's concept ofcultural landscape evolution to identify and synthesize the environmental, cultural, historical and technological dynamics which have culminated in South Carolina's contemporary geography. This approach yields two background 134Southeastern Geographer chapters on the state's physical geography, followed by four chapters on South Carolina's historical geography to 1950, and four chapters on characteristics of the contemporary landscape. Physical contrasts from the narrow Blue Ridge to the broader Piedmont and Coastal Plains form both striking and subtle landform and climatic expressions characteristic to South Carolina's small but diverse area. Subsequent patterns of historical and economic development, as well as resultant cultural landscapes, appear with equal diversity over space and time. The authors build on those differences, comprehensively reconstructing the past geographies that have made a distinctive imprint on the present day landscape. For clarity and synthesis in their presentation, Kovacik and Winberry skillfully divide the state's historical geography into four time periods: 1) the indigenous landscape, from pre-historic time to about 1565, 2) the colonial landscape, 1565 to 1785, 3) the antebellum landscape, 1785 to 1865 and 4) the postbellum landscape , 1865 into the 1940's. Emphasis is given not only to the distinct geography of each period but also to the contributions that each has imparted to the area's present geography. Vestiges from the first period, for example, include Indian place names, plant domesticates that have become southern dietary staples and the apparent origins of barbecue. The cultural background of South Carolina's population, like its economic history is deeply rooted in the experiences of the colonial, antebellum and postbellum periods. These past geographies feature a pattern of successive, at times singular, reliance on one economic enterprise. An economy dominated by indigo and rice was supplanted by the dominance of cotton, then replaced by textiles, tobacco and forestry, all unevenly distributed over space and time. Numerous maps and illustrations provide a clear spatial perspective of these important developmental periods. Chapter endings carefully summarize the ways that the geography of each period has shaped present patterns. Relict features such as trunk systems in former rice-producing areas, abandoned canals and antebellum mansions all remain as reminders of the past. South Carolina effectively interprets the complexity of the past and its imprint on the contemporary landscape. Four chapters of equal length to that of the historical setting provide...

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