As Elvis Costello said about describing sound with written word, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” While we don’t think it’s stupid, we certainly recognize the difficulty of the task (on a side note, if anyone wants to dance about architecture, please YouTube it for us!). However, John Biewen,… Continue Reading Behind the Scenes of Reality Radio
Startling statistics from a study done by the University of Memphis and USA Swimming have been reported: about 68.9 percent of African American children are unable to adequately swim, compared to 40 percent of white children with low swimming skills. While the disproportionate rates of swimming skills can be traced to early 20th-century segregation, the question of why this disparity… Continue Reading Racial Disparities in Swimming Rates: History Informs the Present
Last week we watched with interest as a significant story unfolded with the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team. As they attempted to travel to the UK for international competition, they were entangled in a visa dispute. Although the team traveled internationally just a couple years ago using their Iroquois passports, British authorities refused to admit them to the UK this time… Continue Reading On the Iroquois Lacrosse Team, Sovereignty, and Sport
Whether you have a sweet tooth or a mouth full of sweet teeth, Foy Edelman has a recipe to satisfy that guilty pleasure. With more than 220 recipes in Sweet Carolina, the native North Carolinian offers a wide variety of goodies from kitchens all across the state. You can meet the contributing cooks and listen to them talk about their… Continue Reading Interview: Meet Foy Edelman…and other cooks from across North Carolina
I have been frustrated by this week’s back-and-forth between the Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and civil rights veteran Jesse Jackson. Don’t get me wrong; Dan Gilbert’s letter smacked of grating paternalism; he spoke of James like a petulant child, rather than a man who had more than fulfilled his seven-year contract. His tone was inappropriate and disrespectful. Such a… Continue Reading Slavery and the NBA?
Doctors Nortin M. Hadler and Mark E. Williams recently authored a piece about the changing dynamics of healthcare after retirement, a system dating to the 1960s. They say the modern notion of Americans spend the last years of life has become incredibly sterilized since the influx of for-profit nursing homes. With increasing lifespans and complexity of treatment, what was good… Continue Reading Changing the Nursing Care Model
Though North Carolina has welcomed the recent arrival of a certain Scandinavian furniture mecca, the state has a rich history as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” Patricia Phillips Marshall, coauthor of Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color, provides an entry in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina that gives a brief account of the furniture boom and… Continue Reading WATCH: Furniture Making slideshow
Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation is one of the inaugural books in the multi-press collaborative series First Peoples, New Directions in Indigenous Studies. In a guest post for the First Peoples blog, author Malinda Maynor Lowery (Lumbee) writes about how she continues to navigate the effects of colonialism in her… Continue Reading Malinda Maynor Lowery: Troubles Decolonizing a Colonial History
We know, we know. Winning isn’t everything, but we have to admit, it sure does feel good! Author Daniel Sutherland was awarded the first ever Tom Watson Brown Book Award, a $50,000 prize, by the Society of Civil War Historians, for his book A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War. The Watson Brown prize “is awarded… Continue Reading Sutherland Wins Inaugural Tom Watson Brown Book Award
There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as the eruption of historical parallels and lessons have ranged from the wrong-headed to the off-kilter. Continue Reading The McChrystal Affair: Pity the Poor Historian
Anne Raver of The New York Times takes a stroll through the gardens of Monticello, where director of gardens and grounds Peter Hatch reveals some of Thomas Jefferson’s trial-and-error (and error, and trial, and error) gardening history. The folks at Monticello restored Jefferson’s original 2-acre kitchen garden about thirty years ago, and have returned to some of the former president’s… Continue Reading Jefferson’s Gardens
If you love a book, you probably love a library. Do something to help keep public libraries around. Today more than a thousand librarians and library advocates headed to Washington, D.C., for their annual library lobby day. On the agenda for their discussions with their representatives is the request for funding the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) at $300… Continue Reading Virtual Library Advocacy Day
When former President Bill Clinton was elected nearly 18 years ago, there was heated debate about gays serving in the United States military. Originally, a proposed federal law was to ban all gays from the armed services; Clinton rallied support for a compromise and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was born in 1993. Seven years later, Clinton declared June… Continue Reading June is LGBT Pride Month
Gray Whaley’s new book, Oregon and the Collapse of Illahee: U.S. Empire and the Transformation of an Indigenous World, 1792-1859 is part of UNC Press’s collaborative series with three other presses, First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies. In an interview with the author, the First Peoples blog begins: The mainstream narrative of the founding of Oregon has been described… Continue Reading Interview: Gray Whaley
Until very recently, the term “feminist” was used by those on the right only as a negative descriptor of someone who would invariably be a political foe. Devoted feminists have struggled to set the word free from the negative connotations and reclaim the label as a source of pride, with mixed results, especially among younger generations of independent women whose… Continue Reading Feminism and the Republican Party: Equating Female with Feminist?
This weekend is Father’s Day (hope you didn’t forget!) and in honor of pops and grandpas everywhere, we have an interview with Judith Walzer Leavitt, author of Make Room for Daddy. Drawing from letters, journals and interviews with fathers, Leavitt investigates how the role of the father changed from the 1940s to the 1980s. Once banished to the waiting room,… Continue Reading Interview: Judith Walzer Leavitt
Here’s the deal. I’m a dog. And I like to read and travel through time. A few weeks ago, the fine people at UNC Press gave me this nifty time machine. (They think the blue goggles will distract me from the fact that it’s made out of old UNC Press books held together with duct tape. I play along.) Since… Continue Reading See Gus Read…and Time Travel
Leonard Rogoff, author of Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina, will be reading from and signing his book tonight at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh starting at 7:30 pm. Rogoff, a historian for the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina and president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, writes about the life of Jewish people in North Carolina in… Continue Reading Discover the History of Jewish Life in North Carolina – in print, on screen, in person
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is upon us! The frenzied fans are coming out from every nook and cranny to cheer on their teams, painted head to toe in team colors and fervently waving flags. An event that only occurs once every four years, this year’s tournament is hosting 32 teams in South Africa and, like past gatherings, will keep… Continue Reading Gooooooooal!
In the world of U.S. foreign policy, the release of a new National Security Strategy is a big deal. This congressionally mandated exercise offers an opportunity for the executive to grapple with basic issues, and it may even herald the birth of a “doctrine” (as it did for George W. Bush in 2002). The Obama administration rolled out its NSS… Continue Reading The Obama National Security Strategy: “Mush” Ado about Nothing?
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