The Wall Street Journal‘s got a breezy and abbreviated history of the book all wrapped up in this entertaining six-minute video. Check it out: A fun, snappy little glimpse at a four-hundred-year history, no? But if you want the full history of books in America in all its juicy detail, you can find it in (ahem) actual book form as… Continue Reading The History of the Book: The Long and Short of It
The Blue Ridge Book Fest began today and will run through Saturday, June 5, at the Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock, NC. The free event opens its doors at 8:15 Saturday morning and the programs run strong until the end of the fest at 4 p.m. More than thirty authors will be in attendance, representing genres from adventure… Continue Reading Books, Trails, and More: Visit Hendersonville This Weekend!
The name Mildred Council may not ring a bell, but the restaurateur is the reigning queen of soul food in North Carolina. Council, who is best recognized by her alias, “Mama Dip,” is a UNC Press cookbook author and owner of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill. As we mentioned last year, June is National Soul Food Month. What is… Continue Reading Finger Lickin’ Good
Each month on the UNC Press homepage, we feature a handful of interviews with authors. I’d like to bring them over and share them with you blog readers because they’re so often just fun and interesting. I want to start by introducing Victoria E. Bynum, author of three books with us, including, most recently, The Long Shadow of the Civil… Continue Reading Interview: Victoria E. Bynum
“I have two comments: Number 1, if you’re going to be a writer, don’t go to school to be a writer. Get a pencil and a piece of paper and start writing. Secondly, if there’s anything in this world you can do, do it rather than be a writer. It’s the loneliest, most depressing work in the world.” – Walker… Continue Reading Happy Birthday, Walker Percy
Alan Jabbour, who authored Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians with his wife Karen Singer Jabbour, provides some insight to a grassroots ritual that led to the creation of a federal holiday. –alyssa Many rural community cemeteries in western North Carolina hold “decorations.” A decoration is a religious service in the cemetery when… Continue Reading What is Decoration Day?
We welcome a guest post today from Patrick Cullom, an archivist at Wilson Library on the UNC campus, who has a special connection to the new book by Robert Korstad and James Leloudis, To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America.–ellen Last month I had the pleasure of attending… Continue Reading Behind the Scenes: Archiving the Photographs of Billy Barnes
The month for honoring mothers, recognizing college graduates and remembering fallen service men and women is drawing to a close. While these occasions – along with blooming flowers and blue skies – take the spotlight in May, we shouldn’t forget the month long celebration for National Barbecue Month! Last year we told you the guidelines for North Carolina barbecue, as… Continue Reading We Like Excuses To Eat: May is National Barbecue Month
During the mid-1800s, Thomas Day was the most successful cabinet maker working in North Carolina. A significant figure in the history of woodworking, equally as important for his role in American history as an astoundingly successful free man of color in the Antebellum South, Day developed a truly original aesthetic and showed unmatched skill as a maker of cabinets, furniture,… Continue Reading The Legacy of Thomas Day
We’ve blogged before about E. Patrick Johnson’s amazing Sweet Tea project–the book, the performances. Johnson is now starring in the one-man-show called Sweet Tea at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago through May 29. Here’s a taste of his preparation with director Daniel Alexander Jones. We have a special website dedicated to Sweet Tea, where you can see clips of Johnson’s… Continue Reading Sweet Tea on the Chicago Stage
We welcome a guest post today from Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, author of Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era. In her book, Sklaroff argues that New Deal cultural programs supporting notable black intellectuals, celebrities, and artists (including Lena Horne, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, and Richard Wright) represent a key moment in the… Continue Reading Lena Horne and the Irony of Cultural Politics
Tomorrow’s the big day: the NASCAR Hall of Fame grand opening in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Asheville Citizen-Times gives us a little taste of the place. Later this month, five legendary figures from NASCAR history will be inducted into the Hall of Fame: Dale Earnhardt, Bill France Jr., Bill France Sr., Junior Johnson, and Richard Petty. We’ve got no quarrel… Continue Reading NASCAR Hall of Fame Opens
The U.K. edition of A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives hits bookstores across the pond today — just as Britons head to the polls to elect a new Prime Minister. In a previous guest post, editor Michael H. Hunt addressed one of the more striking similarities between the Vietnam War and the current conflict… Continue Reading Victory in Vietnam: The Myth That Won’t Die But Can’t Stand Up
When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans is more than a book we’ve just published — it’s a multimedia project based on interviews with dozens of female military veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book juxtaposes 48 photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of… Continue Reading When Janey Comes Marching Home – Photo exhibit now in Arlington, Va.
Joe Biden recently announced some changes to Title IX policies to close a loophole opened up by the Bush administration in 2005. Glad to see Title IX taken seriously by this administration. There’s still a ways to go to bring full equality to women’s sports, however. Jennifer Etnier (author of Bring Your “A” Game: A Young Athlete’s Guide to Mental… Continue Reading Recovering lost ground on Title IX
It is night. A lone black woman walks through a cornfield in South Carolina. The stars wink above her. Crickets and cicadas grow quiet as she passes and then resume their orchestral humming, now punctuated by the sound of rustling leaves a little farther off. She moves toward an unpainted one-room building. When she gets there, she will have to… Continue Reading Septima Clark, Freedom’s Teacher
When we got wind of Michael Steele’s recent comments about the Republican Party continuing a “Southern Strategy” for the past 40 years, we turned to an expert on southern politics for insight into Steele’s allusion to the Nixon-era strategy of racial exclusion. Michael Perman is author of Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the American South, which traces the… Continue Reading The Republicans’ “Southern Strategy” Unmasked?
We welcome a guest post today from Stan Ulanski, author of The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River in the Atlantic. After the deadly explosion on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana last week, thousands of gallons of oil started pouring into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We… Continue Reading The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: Fate and Behavior
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