On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day celebrations and teach-ins were held in Philadelphia, PA. Over the forty years since then, Earth Day has spread throughout the United States and around the globe, becoming an observed event in almost every nation worldwide. To recognize this important day, UNC Press would like to welcome author Jennifer Frick-Ruppert to the blog.… Continue Reading Earth Day in the Southern Appalachians
From Shane J. Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present, we welcome this guest post addressing Barack Obama’s most recent nuclear initiatives. If you missed Maddock’s January guest post, “The Delicate Art of Nuclear Jujutsu,” go back and take a look.–ellen President Barack Obama renewed the U.S. commitment to… Continue Reading Obama’s Nuclear Initiatives: Neither “Sufficient” Nor “Bold”
From Mississippi to Manhattan, I learned that African American postal workers’ decades-long challenge to the post office and postal union status quo–that for years included segregation and discrimination–was a key factor in transforming the post office. Continue Reading A Retired Postal Worker’s Tax Day Recollections
A federal judge Tuesday ordered a rural county in southwestern Mississippi to stop segregating its schools by grouping African American students into all-black classrooms and allowing white students to transfer to the county’s only majority-white school, the U.S. Justice Department announced. (read the whole story here) When I saw the story yesterday headlined “Miss. county schools ordered to comply with… Continue Reading Today’s Segregated Schools
We published Lance Hill’s book The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement several years ago, but we’ve stayed in touch with him, eager to hear his reports from New Orleans through Katrina and after. As an activist and civil rights historian, he brings a valuable perspective to local politics and educational issues of a city still… Continue Reading Why Are Children Killing Children in New Orleans?
UNC Press recently partnered with the Kenan-Flagler Business School to combine bookselling and leadership training for a group of MBA students. We were delighted by the students’ approaches to the challenge, and of course were thrilled to have a hardcore two-day sales team. One of the participants, Anthony Lewis, describes his experiences in this fantastic guest post. Thanks to Kenan-Flagler… Continue Reading Before You Arrest Us, Would You Care to Buy a Book?!
“We’re frustrated,” conceded President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on Monday. The U.S. relationship with Afghan president Hamid Karzai is currently strained, to say the least. Offering some historical perspective on the situation, we welcome a guest post today from Michael H. Hunt, whose most recent book, A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives, was… Continue Reading Karzai and the Shadow of Diem
Today, we’re lucky to have a guest post from Lynn Coulter, author of Gardening with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, & Vegetables for a new Generation. Recently, Lynn was invited to Epcot at Walt Disney World as part of their “Great American Gardeners” series. Her highlights from the 2010 International Flower and Garden Festival focus on growing heirloom varieties of… Continue Reading Great American Gardeners: Lynn Coulter Reports from Epcot
Today we welcome a guest post from William W. McLendon, M.D., coauthor, with Floyd W. Denny Jr. and William B. Blythe, of Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement. The book explores the history of North Carolina’s postwar effort to provide health care for all N.C.… Continue Reading Improving the Health of North Carolinians, Then and Now
We welcome a guest post today from Joshua M. Dunn, author of Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins. Dunn’s book explores the 1987 case that became the federal court’s most expensive attempt at school desegregation: Judge Russell Clark mandated tax increases to help pay for improvements to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District in an effort to lure… Continue Reading Up to Date in Kansas City
The cover story for this week’s Independent Weekly (on newsstands in the Triangle from 3/24/10 to 3/30/10), discusses the victims of North Carolina’s 20th-century eugenics program and the current campaign for reparations to people (mostly poor black women) who were forcibly sterilized. As of March 1, 2010, the state has established an organization to finally bring justice for surviving victims.… Continue Reading The legacy of North Carolina’s eugenics program
Today brings us a guest post from Raúl Ramos, author of Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861. In his book, Ramos introduces a new model for the transnational history of the United States as he focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano, society in a period of political transition beginning with the year of Mexican independence. Ramos explores… Continue Reading Battle Without End: Raúl Ramos on the politics of Texas history
We welcome a guest post today from S. Scott Rohrer, author of Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865. Popular literature and frontier studies stress that Americans moved west to farm or to seek a new beginning. In Wandering Souls, Rohrer argues that Protestant migrants in early America relocated in search of salvation, Christian community, reform, or all three. In… Continue Reading Scott Rohrer on Ancestral Migrations
Today our author Wendy Rouse Jorae writes on the occasion of Chinese New Year. In her book, The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco 1850-1920, Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families–and particularly children–played important roles in its daily life. Facing barriers of immigration exclusion, cultural dislocation, child… Continue Reading The Children of Chinatown and Chinese New Year
We welcome a guest post today from Michael J. Allen, author of Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War. In his book, Allen analyzes the effects that activism by POW and MIA families had on U.S. politics before and after the Vietnam War’s official end. In this post, marking the anniversary of the first… Continue Reading Bringing the War Home: Operation Homecoming and the Unending Vietnam War
In this first post of the new year, new decade, as concerns over the nuclear programs of countries such as Iran and North Korea continue to make headlines, we welcome the following commentary from Shane J. Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (forthcoming March 2010). In his book,… Continue Reading The Delicate Art of Nuclear Jujutsu
Today we welcome a guest post from Lee Bernstein, author of America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s (forthcoming June 2010). In his book, Bernstein explores the forces that sparked a dramatic “prison art renaissance” in the 1970s, when incarcerated people produced powerful works of writing, performance, and visual art. One of the important figures… Continue Reading Miguel Pinero: prisoner, playwright
In a follow-up to his article on Obama and Afghanistan, Michael Hunt responds to President Obama’s speech at West Point last night, in which the President laid out his plan for additional troops and a timeline for withdrawal.–ellen [author photo by Dan Sears] Barack Obama has an impressive intellect, and he has given the decision on Afghanistan policy the careful,… Continue Reading Obama Pronounces on Afghanistan: Deja Vu All Over Again!
It’s mid-September and many of us are now back in the swing of the school year; we are surrounded by the sights and sounds of new and returning students, not just in class but all across campus. Among these students at many colleges and universities are the conspicuous members of fraternities wearing their T-shirts advertising last year’s luau, Greek week,… Continue Reading Nick Syrett on the Greek System, Then and Now
We welcome a guest post today from Michael Oriard, whose most recent book is Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era, which we will publish this November. He recently blogged about the scholarly obligation of the “scholar-athlete” arrangement in college sports over at the New York Times’ college sports blog, The Quad. In this post,… Continue Reading LaGarrette Blount, Video Games, and Athletes’ Rights
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