Category: American History

National Women’s History Month: Women at War

If you are familiar with the UNC Press Blog, you probably know that we know a thing or two about celebrating. If it has a national celebration day, week, or month, we probably have it marked on our calendars well in advance. Why else would we have a 1000-word post on the merits of National Chili Day, like we did… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: Women at War

Scott Rohrer on Ancestral Migrations

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

To Right These Wrongs: A Groundbreaking Project

The first few books from UNC Press’ Spring|Summer 2010 catalog made it to bookshelves this month, and many more will be debuting in the coming months. One of the books we’re excited to publish, in partnership with Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement, is Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis’ To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and… Continue Reading To Right These Wrongs: A Groundbreaking Project

How do you Explain the Seemingly Unexplainable?

This is the question Susan Reverby considers in a post over at Wonders & Marvels. The author of, most recently, Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy writes: In my most recent book, I had to explain: why did the doctors do it? Sometimes it is easy to answer this: all the men were black and poor, and… Continue Reading How do you Explain the Seemingly Unexplainable?

Two Inaugural Addresses–two weeks apart

Early 1861 marked the only time in our nation’s history that it had two presidents, both calling for a return to the republic born in the American Revolution. On February 18, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the President of the Confederate States of America; on March 4, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States of… Continue Reading Two Inaugural Addresses–two weeks apart

Real NASCAR in Real Time: Dan Pierce is blogging!

Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, by Daniel S. Pierce, is hot off the press and hitting bookstores now. If you’re a racing fan or southern history buff, this book is the can’t-miss backstory behind what has become a billion-dollar industry and one of the most popular spectator sports in America. Pierce writes as a historian… Continue Reading Real NASCAR in Real Time: Dan Pierce is blogging!

The Children of Chinatown and Chinese New Year

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

Bringing the War Home: Operation Homecoming and the Unending Vietnam War

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

“Black Men Bearing Freedom” This Weekend in Wilmington

All readers interested in American history should take the coming Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday weekend as an opportunity to head to the Wilmington area for a fantastic panel discussion titled “Black Men Bearing Freedom: U.S. Colored Troops and Their Impact in North Carolina” on January 15th at 6 p.m. Presented by the Fort Fisher State Historic Site and held… Continue Reading “Black Men Bearing Freedom” This Weekend in Wilmington

Miguel Pinero: prisoner, playwright

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

Reaction to the Cobell Settlement

We announced last January that UNC Press was one of four university presses awarded a Mellon grant for a collaborative project to publish books in indigenous studies. As part of the joint project, some of our colleagues have set up a blog for the First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies series. You can get to know more about the… Continue Reading Reaction to the Cobell Settlement

North Carolina Award Winners

Hearty congratulations to multiple UNC Press authors who have recently been honored by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for their outstanding work in North Carolina history and culture. Anna Hayes was awarded the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction for Without Precedent: The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp. The award is given yearly by the North Carolina… Continue Reading North Carolina Award Winners

Obama and Afghanistan

Before we close up shop for the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to highlight some excellent commentary on President Obama’s impending decision about how to proceed with the war in Afghanistan. The President is scheduled to make an announcement next Tuesday, December 1, about his intentions for America’s next steps. Between now and then, we would do well to consider the… Continue Reading Obama and Afghanistan

Charron Discusses the Life of Septima Clark on the State of Things today

In the mid-1950s, Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), a former public school teacher, developed a citizenship training program that enabled thousands of African Americans to register to vote and then to link the power of the ballot to concrete strategies for individual and communal empowerment. In Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark, Katherine Mellen Charron demonstrates Clark’s crucial role–and the… Continue Reading Charron Discusses the Life of Septima Clark on the State of Things today

The Charlie Poole Backstory

Last night as I was driving home I heard an NPR story about a new album by Loudon Wainwright III called High Wide & Handsome: A Tribute to Charlie Poole. Poole was among those early-twentieth-century musicians from Piedmont North Carolina mill villages whose hillbilly music and tunes from the textile mills helped shape what we now call country music. Wainwright… Continue Reading The Charlie Poole Backstory

UNC Press Goes West (And Likes It)

First, let’s set the scene: A little closer… Last Sunday, UNC Press held a book party at the historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC.  The event celebrated three of our fall 2009 titles: Foy Allen Edelman, author of SWEET CAROLINA, spent six years traveling every inch of North Carolina to collect the best in local dessert recipes; the result… Continue Reading UNC Press Goes West (And Likes It)

Brazinsky on South Korea’s economic development and democratization

We welcome a guest post from Gregg Brazinsky, author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy, which we have just released in paperback. August 15 marks a date of both historical and personal significance. It was on August 15, 1945, that Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies and relinquished its empire, thereby ending… Continue Reading Brazinsky on South Korea’s economic development and democratization

Tar Heel Trek: Brunswick County

The following is a guide to Bald Head Island written in the form of a children’s book: One summer we took the ferry to an island.  We stayed in a little house on the beach and watched the ocean move.  We put on suntan lotion and laid towels out on the sand.  We built castles that ceased to stand and… Continue Reading Tar Heel Trek: Brunswick County

Happy Birthday, Annie Oakley

A guest post today from Laura Browder, author of Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America and the forthcoming (May 2010) When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, which features photographs by Sascha Pflaeging. Let’s take a moment today to celebrate the 149th birthday of Annie Oakley.  But let’s remember her not as just a great… Continue Reading Happy Birthday, Annie Oakley

Mary P. Ryan discusses her book,”Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History on ROROTOKO

With a title alluding to the complicated past of gender and sex, Mary P. Ryan’s Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American History gives us a thoughtful and thorough examination of  the long debated battle over the differences between men and women. The question of how the dividing line between male and female is drawn—and repeatedly redrawn—over the… Continue Reading Mary P. Ryan discusses her book,”Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History on ROROTOKO