"Color Our World with History:" BDC Suggestions for the AHA Summer Reading Challenge, 2025

The American Historical Association has been running its own Summer Reading Program - mostly for historians - but there's nothing to stop a BDC local history nerd from participating. Indeed, I encourage you to join their effort - or at the very least to include some works of history in your reading planned for the summer months.  

I'm sharing the challenge with you so that you can get double milage from any summer reading you do with the BCL. Whatever you choose to read to complete the AHA challenge can indeed "count" towards progress on the Beaufort County Library's summer reading program gameboard too. 

Here's a caveat: AHA's challenge runs longer - through the months of June, July and August - whereas the Library's Summer Reading Program runs May 31 - July 31 this year. I include the AHA's Summer Reading Challenge 2025 announcement in toto for you: 

In these chaotic times, we’re feeling the need to escape. And what better way is there to forget about the present than by diving into a good book about the past?

So we invite you to participate in the fourth annual AHA Summer Reading Challenge. Participants will complete three (or more) of the following tasks in the months of June, July, and August. These tasks encourage you to read widely—outside your field, your areas of expertise, and your personal experiences—and define “history” as nonfiction at any length (a book, an article, a chapter).

• Read a history of an event with a major anniversary in 2025.
• Read a history of a resistance movement.
• Read a history that uses material culture.
• Read an edited collection, journal forum, or other multiauthor work.
• Read a history that’s been sitting on your shelf too long.
• Read a piece of historical fiction (novel, story, poem, play).

We encourage participants to post about what they’re reading for this challenge on the AHA Member Forum or on social media using the hashtag #AHAReads. And for those that complete the challenge by Labor Day, there will be a small reward at the end.

Want a paper checklist? Tear off the back cover of the May issue of Perspectives on History or download a PDF.

Here are some suggestions from the BDC: 

• Read a history of an event with a major anniversary in 2025.

This one is pretty obvious - because we just commemorated Lafayette's visit to Beaufort 200 years ago. The Connections post that I wrote in March about the historical context of his visit should suffice. Or perhaps you'll enjoy Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825: Journal of a Voyage to the United States by Auguste Levasseur, edited by Alan Hoffman (2016) which is available on the BCL's Hoopla service as an e-book. 

• Read a history of a resistance movement.

The BDC has a number of books and other materials about that topic. I'd suggest that you begin with All for Civil Rights : African American Lawyers in South Carolina, 1868-1968 by William Lewis Burke (2017) or Stories of the Struggle : The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina by Claudia Smith Brinson (2020). 

• Read a history that uses material culture.

In case you're wondering, material culture is the aspect of culture manifested by the physical objects and architecture of a society. The term is primarily used in archaeology and anthropology, but is also of interest to sociology, geography and history. When I think of architecture in terms of local history, I think of tabby - and when I think of tabby, I think of Beaufort County's resident expert on the topic, Colin Brooker - and when I think of Colin I think of his magisterial The Shell Builders : Tabby Architecture of Beaufort, South Carolina and the Sea Islands (2020). Other good options are Material Culture in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean edited by David S. Shields; The Materiality of Freedom : Archaeologies of Post-Emancipation Life edited by Jodi A. Barnes; The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South by Dylan C. Penningroth; and The Lives in Objects : Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast by Jessica Yirush Stern. 

• Read an edited collection, journal forum, or other multiauthor work.

What comes immediately to mind are the 3 volumes of the History of Beaufort County, South Carolina by Lawrence Rowland and others: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, 1514 to 1861;         Rebellion, Reconstruction and Redemption, 1861 - 1893; and Bridging the Sea Islands' Past and Present, 1893 - 2006.  Good local history related edited collections include The Yamasee Indians: From Florida to South Carolina edited by Denise Bossy; Seeking : Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth; The Civil War in South Carolina : Selections from the South Carolina Historical Magazine edited by Stephen G. Hoffius and Lawrence S. Rowland; and Our Prince of Scribes : Writers Remember Pat Conroy edited by Nicole A. Seitz. 

• Read a history that’s been sitting on your shelf too long.

I can't give you any suggestions for this one. Only you know what's sitting on your bookshelves at home. 

• Read a piece of historical fiction (novel, story, poem, play).

Sydney has offered lots of suggestions elsewhere in Connections for historical novels and poems. How about an historical romance such as Beaufort 1849 by Karen Lynn Allen? Or perhaps Hilton Head by Josephine Pinckney, a fictional account of the life of Dr. Henry Woodward?  

I hope that you will continue your quest for lifelong learning by always exploring the perspectives of a variety of historians and periods of history.  A fact may always be a fact - but results of more recent scholarship and changing perspectives sometimes impacts a thinking person's understanding of past events: the how and why of historic documentation often does change.