Category: Literature

Southern Gateways: essential southern reading that makes a great gift

Our Holiday Sale is now underway! If you need some gift ideas for the folks on your list, our Southern Gateways catalog is a great place to start. Southern Gateways is where we collect of all our general interest books about this region we call home. Continue Reading Southern Gateways: essential southern reading that makes a great gift

Fall sale wrap-up: new categories 50% off, sale ends soon!

Announcing our last four sale subjects, all at 50% off, with free shipping for orders over $75 for the next two weeks. Continue Reading Fall sale wrap-up: new categories 50% off, sale ends soon!

North Carolina Icons: The Brown Mountain Lights

This week we’re featuring number 79 from Our State magazine’s 100 North Carolina Icons list: the Brown Mountain Lights. Unexplained lights often appear at Brown Mountain, hovering in the air when the weather is right. Our State writes, “Your best chance at catching the Brown Mountain Lights is Milepost 310 along the Blue Ridge Parkway, at the Brown Mountain Overlook along Highway 181, or from the top of Table Rock.” There have been various explanations for the lights, from scientific to legends and ghost stories. Today we have some suggested books of Carolina ghost stories. Continue Reading North Carolina Icons: The Brown Mountain Lights

Tobe: Tracking down the storybook family

Where are they now? Historian Benjamin Filene seeks information about the people involved in the 1939 children’s book “Tobe,” about an African American sharecropping family in NC. Continue Reading Tobe: Tracking down the storybook family

UNC Press Fall Sale: New categories

New Fall sale categories: business history and southern history. Throughout the fall, we’re offering 50% off selected titles in the disciplines listed below. Enter 01SALE12 at checkout. Spend $75.00 and the shipping is free. Continue Reading UNC Press Fall Sale: New categories

The UNC Press fall sale is underway! Save up to 50% on select titles

Throughout the fall, we’re offering 50% off selected titles in the disciplines listed below. Enter 01SALE12 at checkout. Spend $75.00 and the shipping is free. Continue Reading The UNC Press fall sale is underway! Save up to 50% on select titles

Interview: Bland Simpson on Two Captains from Carolina

Bland Simpson, author of Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Maffitt, and the Coming of the Civil War, reveals how the stories of two men can tell the saga of race in the antebellum and Civil War-era South. Continue Reading Interview: Bland Simpson on Two Captains from Carolina

North Carolina Icons: The Great Dismal Swamp

This week in our North Carolina icons series we’re featuring the Great Dismal Swamp, which stretches from Norfolk, Virginia to Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It’s number 80 on Our State magazine’s 100 North Carolina Icons list, where it’s described: “Birds don’t find the swamp dismal at all. More than 200 species of birds can be spotted there during the year. Grab your binoculars and go.” Continue Reading North Carolina Icons: The Great Dismal Swamp

Miles Orvell: From Mayberry to Dogville: The Small Town as Microcosm

Mayberry, Lake Wobegon, Hadleyburg, Dogville—these are extreme representations of the small town and they are in direct conflict with one another. Taken together, they reveal the contradictions of the American twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Continue Reading Miles Orvell: From Mayberry to Dogville: The Small Town as Microcosm

Patrick M. Erben: Learning Foreign Languages Increases Inter-Human Understanding

What matters more than the goal of language learning is its motivation. Instead of regarding “foreign” language instruction as a means for preserving academic privilege or meeting the demands of a global marketplace, we need to embrace the acquisition of languages as a preparation for one of the most fundamental experiences we share as human beings—the encounter with difference. Continue Reading Patrick M. Erben: Learning Foreign Languages Increases Inter-Human Understanding

90th Anniversary sale now includes biography and American studies books

Our 90th anniversary sale continues with new books added in biography and American studies. Save 50% and get free shipping on orders over $75. Sale continues on select books in Civil War, literature and literary studies, African American history, women’s studies, religious studies, and art, architecture, and craft. Continue Reading 90th Anniversary sale now includes biography and American studies books

Celebrating Paul Green

Harnett County, North Carolina, celebrates native son and Pulitzer-Prize winning dramatist Paul Green this weekend with the Paul Green Festival. UNC Press is proud to publish many of Green’s plays, stories, and letters, including many books brought back into print recently through our Enduring Editions program. Continue Reading Celebrating Paul Green

Spring sale now includes Civil War & Literary Studies

Our 90th anniversary sale now includes selected titles in Civil War, literary studies, women’s studies, religious studies, African American history, and art/architecture/craft. Continue Reading Spring sale now includes Civil War & Literary Studies

DocSouth Books are now available!

Comprising slave narratives, a collection of slave songs, and a call-to-arms pamphlet by a free black man, the DocSouth Books program makes accessible in book (and ebook) form several compelling and enlightening texts from the nineteenth century. Continue Reading DocSouth Books are now available!

Excerpt: Southscapes: Thadious Davis on the work of Ernest Gaines

His writing recovers and preserves a culture and a place that is an exterior, realistic landscape but is also a representation of his own subjectively shaped interior life that is dependent on the space of the plantation as it existed in his youth. Continue Reading Excerpt: Southscapes: Thadious Davis on the work of Ernest Gaines