It’s mid-September and many of us are now back in the swing of the school year; we are surrounded by the sights and sounds of new and returning students, not just in class but all across campus. Among these students at many colleges and universities are the conspicuous members of fraternities wearing their T-shirts advertising last year’s luau, Greek week,… Continue Reading Nick Syrett on the Greek System, Then and Now
We welcome a guest post today from Michael Oriard, whose most recent book is Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era, which we will publish this November. He recently blogged about the scholarly obligation of the “scholar-athlete” arrangement in college sports over at the New York Times’ college sports blog, The Quad. In this post,… Continue Reading LaGarrette Blount, Video Games, and Athletes’ Rights
If you are like me, you look forward to the weekends, but dread spending the annoying amounts of money that usually accompany your weekend entertainment. Well, this weekend, you are in luck. If you are going to be in or around Chapel Hill this weekend, you MUST check out The North Carolina Literary Festival on the UNC campus. Here’s a… Continue Reading Books + Free Entertainment = Great Weekend Plans
This Labor Day, I spent some time thinking not only about the dismal state of the unemployed, the underemployed (whether by furlough, reduced hours, part-time work that has replaced full-time, or a job below the worker’s experience and capabilities) and the discouraged worker (who has given up even looking for work), to contemplate another kind of Labor Day–the day that… Continue Reading Celebrating the “other” Labor Day…
“Drink your teeeeee!” That would be the song of the male Eastern Towhee, according to the Learn Bird Songs! website. You can hear the songs of nearly three dozen species there, and hone your imitation on the way to Atlanta this weekend. John Yow, the Armchair Birder, will be at the Decatur Book Festival Sunday afternoon at 2:30, and he’s… Continue Reading Come sing your birdsong for the Armchair Birder
Long concerned with the environmental impact involved in the making of books, UNC Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since the program’s founding in 2001. This means we’re committed to recycling at the office and we give preference to postconsumer and chlorine-free papers in our book manufacturing. You can read more details about our environmental policy… Continue Reading What we’ve saved by going green
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?
As I have written here before, I’m a Yankee Vegetarian who came to the South too late to discover the taste of North Carolina Barbecue (in any of its varieties). However, as a self-proclaimed Foodie and something of a geek, if there’s one thing that brings out my inner Alton Brown it’s some good old Food Science. And I don’t… Continue Reading Better Barbecue Through Chemistry!
Below is an excerpt of an op-ed piece that Lisa Levenstein wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer about government involvement in health care and the Philadelphia General Hospital. She uses “Old Blockley,” as it was often called, as an example of a a successful public hospital that treated everyone with compassion. Levenstein is an assistant professor of history at the University… Continue Reading Lisa Levenstein weighs in on health care, government involvement & “Old Blockley”
Below is commentary by Lois Shepherd, J.D., in which she discusses the idea of doctor- patient conversations about death and the current status of such counseling in the universal health care debate. Shepherd is the author of If That Ever Happens to Me: Making Life and Death Decisions After Terri Schiavo. She holds a joint appointment as associate professor of… Continue Reading Lois Shepherd Discusses Idea of Doctor/Patient End-of-Life Counseling and the Ongoing Health Care Debate
Imagine sitting in a backstage dressing room, snacking on trail mix and chatting with your friends, when your ballet teacher rushes in, frantically calling your name and informing you that one of the princesses has sprained her ankle and must be replaced in the ballet’s final act just ten minutes away. You are the shocked understudy required to dance in… Continue Reading Mental Toughness in Sports: A Ballerina’s Perspective
Jack Temple Kirby, author of MOCKINGBIRD SONG: ECOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES OF THE SOUTH (2006)–winner of the 2007 Bancroft Prize awarded annually to a book “of exceptional merit” by Columbia University and the 2007 Bennett H. Wall Award given for the best book in Southern economic or businesshistory from the Southern Historical Association–died on August 6. Kirby also wrote POQUOSIN: A STUDY… Continue Reading JACK TEMPLE KIRBY (1938-2009)
We welcome a guest post from Gregg Brazinsky, author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy, which we have just released in paperback. August 15 marks a date of both historical and personal significance. It was on August 15, 1945, that Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies and relinquished its empire, thereby ending… Continue Reading Brazinsky on South Korea’s economic development and democratization
The following is a guide to Bald Head Island written in the form of a children’s book: One summer we took the ferry to an island. We stayed in a little house on the beach and watched the ocean move. We put on suntan lotion and laid towels out on the sand. We built castles that ceased to stand and… Continue Reading Tar Heel Trek: Brunswick County
A guest post today from Laura Browder, author of Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America and the forthcoming (May 2010) When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, which features photographs by Sascha Pflaeging. Let’s take a moment today to celebrate the 149th birthday of Annie Oakley. But let’s remember her not as just a great… Continue Reading Happy Birthday, Annie Oakley
Saturday, August 9, marked the 64th anniversary of America’s WWII bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. In the following guest post, J. Samuel Walker, author of Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan, discusses the controversy over whether the use of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki served any military purpose and considers what did and didn’t… Continue Reading The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
CNN.com recently ran a story about scientists at Florida Atlantic University researching and considering ways to harness energy from Gulf Stream currents off the coast of Florida. We happen to have a Gulf Stream expert in the UNC Press family, so we asked Stan Ulanski, author of The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the… Continue Reading Power from the Gulf Stream
With a title alluding to the complicated past of gender and sex, Mary P. Ryan’s Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American History gives us a thoughtful and thorough examination of the long debated battle over the differences between men and women. The question of how the dividing line between male and female is drawn—and repeatedly redrawn—over the… Continue Reading Mary P. Ryan discusses her book,”Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History on ROROTOKO
Today, The New York Times ran Jones County, Miss. – Civil War Fires Up Literary Shootout, a report by Michael Cieply about two conflicting books and a yet-to-be greenlighted Hollywood movie. At the center of everything lies Newton Knight, a white, landowning, Confederate deserter living deep in Mississippi, who famously tried to secede and form the Free State of Jones.… Continue Reading Web 2.0, Text Wars, and Building the Better Book: How the Internet Changes Everything We Do
Last month, the passing of Michael Jackson sent people all across the globe into mourning. From his most loyal listeners to even those too young to remember Jackson the musician but instead Jackson the punchline to jokes, the outpouring of respect for one person was unparalleled in this decade. In the following guest post, Charles Ponce de Leon, author of… Continue Reading Michael Jackson and a Lifetime of Celebrity
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