Today we celebrate the birthday of Lillian Wald (1867-1940), founder of Henry Street Settlement on New York’s Lower East Side as well as the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Wald was a second-generation German Jewish immigrant who developed close associations with Jewish New York even as she consistently dismissed claims that her work emerged from a fundamentally Jewish calling.… Continue Reading Happy birthday, Lillian Wald
We love it when new UNC Press books seem to be in conversation with other books of the moment. Take Patti Smith’s acclaimed new memoir, Just Kids (HarperCollins 2010), which offers an inside look at the punk pioneer’s artistic influences and collaborations, including Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Shepard, and Fred “Sonic” Smith–all men. However, right there on… Continue Reading Louisa May Alcott and the Godmother of Punk
Have you heard? Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has sponsored a bill to replace U.S. Grant on the $50 bill with Ronald Reagan. In an op-ed for the LA Times, Grant biographer Joan Waugh offers a brief history lesson in defense of the Union general and 18th President of the United States and cautions against further erosion of Grant’s legacy. An… Continue Reading Joan Waugh on Grant v. Reagan (yes, as in Ulysses S. and Ronald)
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
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
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
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
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?
This week is the very good time to talk about Graham Hodges’ new book David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City–for at least two reasons. The first of these is that Hodges was interviewed by Eric Foner (DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University) as part of the Lincoln Series at the… Continue Reading David Ruggles, Abolitionist and Mentor to Abolitionists
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: 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
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