Category: History

Happy Birthday, General Butler: Remarks for Butler Birthday Commemoration

The following are remarks given by Elizabeth D. Leonard, author of Benjamin Franklin Butler: a Noisy, Fearless Life, at the annual Benjamin Butler birthday commemoration at the cemetery in Dracut, MA, where he and many of his family members are buried. As you may or may not know, I am the author of a new biography of General Butler: Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy,… Continue Reading Happy Birthday, General Butler: Remarks for Butler Birthday Commemoration

C. Vann Woodward and the Beginning of the End of Jim Crow’s Career in the SHA: Part 2

The following is the final piece in a two-part guest blog post by James. C. Cobb, author of C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian, available now from your favorite bookstore. In case you missed it, you can find part 1 here. Though he had managed to get John Hope Franklin on the program at the 1949 meeting in Williamsburg, C. Vann Woodward knew… Continue Reading C. Vann Woodward and the Beginning of the End of Jim Crow’s Career in the SHA: Part 2

2022 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

Although UNC Press is not attending the Oral History Association annual meeting in-person this year, you can still visit our virtual booth to browse our recent titles and to connect with one of our editors. New from UNC Press Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism by Heather Berg Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 by John Bodnar Committed:… Continue Reading 2022 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

C. Vann Woodward and the Beginning of the End of Jim Crow’s Career in the SHA: Part 1

The following is part one of a two-part guest blog post by James. C. Cobb, author of C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian, available now from your favorite bookstore. When C. Vann Woodward agreed to chair the program committee for the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in 1949, he was already known not only for his scholarship, but for his… Continue Reading C. Vann Woodward and the Beginning of the End of Jim Crow’s Career in the SHA: Part 1

2022 Western History Association Annual Meeting

UNC Press is excited to once again be exhibiting in-person at the Western History Association Annual Meeting! We hope you’ll stop by booth 43 to say hello to editor Debbie Gershenowitz and to browse our titles on display. If you can’t join us in-person, you can always stop by our virtual booth! Congratulations to our 2022 Western History Association Award… Continue Reading 2022 Western History Association Annual Meeting

Announcing Publication of “A New History of the American South,” the First, Collaborative Effort to Tell the History of the Region for the Twenty-First Century  

The University of North Carolina Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming and long-awaited publication of A New History of the American South, edited by Pulitzer Prize-finalist W. Fitzhugh Brundage. With associate editors Laura Edwards and Jon F. Sensbach, Brundage has compiled a definitive, one-volume history of the American South. The broadly chronological collection features essays by leading scholars on various aspects of the… Continue Reading Announcing Publication of “A New History of the American South,” the First, Collaborative Effort to Tell the History of the Region for the Twenty-First Century  

Lula’s Rise From Metalworker to President of Brazil

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva commonly known as “Lula,” has won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections by 48.4%, much tighter than many had expected. As we await the second round of election please enjoy this excerpt of Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil by John D. French, which was the winner of… Continue Reading Lula’s Rise From Metalworker to President of Brazil

Lost in Fresia

The following is an excerpt from The Investigative Brigade: Hunting Human Rights Criminals in Post-Pinochet Chile by Pascale Bonnefoy Miralles, available now from your favorite bookstore. Lost in Fresia The rain poured down in torrents, and wind whipped against the small Cessna plane suspended in the black of night in flight from Santiago to Puerto Montt. The four passengers on board… Continue Reading Lost in Fresia

Opposition and Misperceptions of Black Reparations

The following is an excerpt from the new preface of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, Second Edition by William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, available now from your favorite bookstore. Opposition to Black Reparations Two major strands of raw opposition to reparations arise out of misperceptions. One category of misperceptions involves the… Continue Reading Opposition and Misperceptions of Black Reparations

Even When China and the US Were Allies, Chinese and Americans Struggled to Get Along

The following is a guest blog post by Zach Fredman, author of The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949, available now wherever books and e-books are sold. Ties between China and the United States have deteriorated to their lowest point since the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1979. But Sino-U.S. relations have always been fraught.… Continue Reading Even When China and the US Were Allies, Chinese and Americans Struggled to Get Along

Archival Research in China and Myanmar before the Doors Closed

The following is a guest blog post by Zach Fredman, author of The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949, available now wherever books and e-books are sold. I spent more than year in Asia researching The Tormented Alliance as a PhD student. My search for sources took me to municipal and provincial archives from all areas of China… Continue Reading Archival Research in China and Myanmar before the Doors Closed

Remembering the Arab Scare: America’s Response to the Munich Olympic Attacks 50 Years Later

Fifty years ago, on September 5, 1972, Palestinian nationalist militants from the Black September organization stunned the world with an attack on Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. Satellite television turned the hostage-taking siege into an international live-action news drama, which reached a bloody climax in the deaths of a police officer, five militants, and all… Continue Reading Remembering the Arab Scare: America’s Response to the Munich Olympic Attacks 50 Years Later

How Starving Soldiers Survived

The following is an excerpt from Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 by Ricardo A. Herrera available everywhere books and e-books are sold. Faced with the collapse of the commissariat and the all too real potential of scattering the army across eastern Pennsylvania so that it might feed itself, Washington was on the horns of a dilemma.… Continue Reading How Starving Soldiers Survived

Martin Luther King Jr. and the “Coca Cola Scenario”

Sunday, August 28, we celebrate the anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. In the following guest post, Daniel T. Fleming, author of Living the Dream: The Contested History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day—available NOW wherever books and e-books are sold—writes about the history surrounding the copyright of the… Continue Reading Martin Luther King Jr. and the “Coca Cola Scenario”

Anne Skorecki Levy, Subject of “Troubled Memory,” Receives Honorary Doctorate

Anne Skorecki Levy, whose story of survival and fight against anti-semitism, racism, and religious persecution is told in Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana by Lawrence N. Powell, is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Loyola University New Orleans. The doctorate citation reads: “educator, humanitarian and truth-teller.” Praise for the award winning and critically acclaimed… Continue Reading Anne Skorecki Levy, Subject of “Troubled Memory,” Receives Honorary Doctorate

New UNC Press Titles in the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program

We are pleased to announce the latest batch of UNC Press e-books being made available as Open-access (OA)—free of charge and for immediate download—via an award sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program. Read about UNC Press Open Access Vision and Policy The previous titles made available through open access via the NEHFOP program in… Continue Reading New UNC Press Titles in the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program

Counterterrorism and Watergate

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the presidency of Richard N. Nixon’s Watergate Scandal. Following is an excerpt taken from the introduction of Daniel S. Chard’s Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism, which shows how America’s war with domestic guerrillas prompted a host of new policing measures as the FBI revived illegal… Continue Reading Counterterrorism and Watergate

Book Talk with Angela Esco Elder: Love and Duty

Between 1861 and 1865, approximately 200,000 women were widowed by the deaths of Civil War soldiers. They recorded their experiences in diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and pension applications. In Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss, Angela Esco Elder draws on these materials—as well as songs, literary works, and material objects like mourning gowns—to explore white Confederate… Continue Reading Book Talk with Angela Esco Elder: Love and Duty

In Memoriam: Eli Evans

We are saddened to learn that Eli N. Evans, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, alumnus of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Yale Law School, and author of The Provincials: A Personal History of the Jewish South, died on July 26th at 85 years of age. Pat Conroy proclaimed The Provincials “the seminal indispensable book about… Continue Reading In Memoriam: Eli Evans

Hungary’s Cold War

In Hungary’s Cold War: International Relations from the End of World War II to the Fall of the Soviet Union, Csaba Békés provides the first multi-archive based synthesis concerning the international relations of the Soviet Bloc, covering the entire Cold War period. Based on Békés’s extensive research over the past three decades, he aims at proving that the East-Central European… Continue Reading Hungary’s Cold War