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!
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
Today, February 12th, 2010, marks the 101st anniversary of one of the nation’s most important organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Because of today’s important nature, we want to focus on someone central to the organization’s success, as well as many more victories in the civil rights movement. Born in 1903, Ella Baker was involved in… Continue Reading An NAACP Anniversary: Looking Back at Ella Baker
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
The Haitian Coat of Arms As we all know, events in recent weeks have been difficult for the people of Haiti. Victories have been few, and all accounts suggest the nightmare is far from over. Today, though, is an important day in Haiti, a bright spot in their story for two reasons. Modern politics in Haiti are tied to February… Continue Reading Today in History: The Importance of February 7th in Haiti
UNC Press is excited to now offer some of our best-selling and award-winning Civil War books in easy-to-read, Large-Print format. Set in 16-point type, these books have been designed to make some of our most requested titles accessible to a larger number of readers than ever before. A dozen books are ready now, and more are on the way in… Continue Reading Civil War books now available in Large-Print format
On February 1, 1960, four students from the historically black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University) sat down in the “whites only” section of a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. They were refused service, but stayed. The next day, there were around 25 protesters. Soon, over 300 protesters… Continue Reading 50 Years: The International Civil Rights Center & Museum
Harvey Neptune, author of Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation, offered some background on Haiti for the arts blog at Temple University (where he is an assistant professor of history). I wanted to share some of his comments on the country’s history as well as his challenge for lovers of freedom to help Haiti rebuild–not just… Continue Reading Harvey Neptune on Haiti’s history
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
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
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
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
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!
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
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
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
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)
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court began their annual session with the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, joining in for the first time. And she jumped right in with both feet, asking lots of questions of the lawyers appearing before the court that day. A couple of weeks ago, as part of the New York Yankees’ Hispanic Heritage Month, Sotomayor threw out… Continue Reading Sotomayor, baseball, and Hispanic heritage
We welcome a guest post today from historian and Vietnam veteran Ron Milam, author of Not a Gentleman’s War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War. In his book, Milam debunks the view of the junior officer typified by Lt. William Calley of My Lai infamy, demonstrating instead that most of the lieutenants who served in combat… Continue Reading The Calley Apology: What Does It Mean?
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