Category: History

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

Reacting to the Past Game Books: Now Available from UNC Press

As previously announced, starting this month UNC Press is proud to be the publisher of Reacting to the Past ™ game books, an award­–winning series of immersive role-playing games that actively engage students in their own learning. Originally developed under the auspices of Barnard College, today they are created and sustained by the Reacting Consortium of colleges and universities. New… Continue Reading Reacting to the Past Game Books: Now Available from UNC Press

Dismal Freedom—On Sale Now

Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp by J. Brent Morris is available now wherever books and ebooks are sold. The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may… Continue Reading Dismal Freedom—On Sale Now

Toward a Nightmare

The following is a guest blog post by Jeffry D. Wert, author of The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers’ Struggle for Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle, available now wherever books and ebooks are sold. May 4, 1864, dawned across central Virginia with spring’s promise of life and war’s portent of death. A day in which “all nature seems smiling” had been anticipated for… Continue Reading Toward a Nightmare

2022 Latina/o Studies Association Conference

UNC Press is excited to be exhibiting in-person at the Latina/o Studies Association Conference for the first time! We hope you’ll stop by our booth to say hello to editor Andreina Fernandez and to browse our titles on display. If you can’t join us in-person, you can always stop by our virtual booth! As a leading publisher of American and… Continue Reading 2022 Latina/o Studies Association Conference

A Vision Place of Souls

The following is a guest blog post by Jeffry D. Wert, author of The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers’ Struggle for Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle, on sale Tuesday, July 12th wherever books and ebooks are sold. It was a cold February afternoon five years ago when I stood inside the Mule Shoe on the battlefield of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia. Man,… Continue Reading A Vision Place of Souls

All Health Politics is Local

All Health Politics is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health is officially on sale now wherever books and ebooks are sold. Health is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation of dueling public sentiments—all conflicts that are often narrated from a national, top-down view. In All… Continue Reading All Health Politics is Local

Grain and Fire

Rebecca Sharpless’s Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South is on sale this week wherever ebooks and books are sold. Sharpless weaves a brilliant chronicle, vast in perspective and entertaining in detail, revealing how three global food traditions—Indigenous American, European, and African—collided with and merged in the economies, cultures, and foodways of the South to create… Continue Reading Grain and Fire