Greetings from Mobile, Alabama! What a weekend-well-spent at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (commonly referred to as SIBA) 2008 trade show. The University of North Carolina Press received quite a bit of positive feedback for many reasons. EVERYONE we spoke with is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue and couldn’t give enough praise… Continue Reading UNC Press in Mobile, AL
Aha! The perfect day, then, to let you know that we’ve brought back into print a great sportsman’s classic, Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies, by Jim Gasque. Gasque’s classic 1948 work offers a period portrait of outdoor life in the Great Smoky Mountains. Filled with anecdotes, fishing and hunting stories, and recollections of legendary local sportsmen and guides,… Continue Reading It’s National Hunting and Fishing Day!
If you didn’t go check out the videos mentioned in Tom’s post on Sweet Tea a couple of weeks ago, go do it now. In fact, here’s a direct link to the page where the videos are. Go on. I’ll wait. . . . . . . Okay, I actually just went and re-watched all six of them again. I… Continue Reading E. Patrick Johnson’s “Pouring Tea” in Chapel Hill and Durham
I took some sign language classes about twenty years ago and had some interaction with the deaf community at the time, but when the classes ended, I didn’t keep it up. I remember little more than the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet, plus a few things like “more,” “thank you,” and “finished,” which I learned again when my sister started… Continue Reading Deaf Awareness Week
Maggie Lena Walker (third from the left in the cover photo) was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1867 (or 1864, or 1865, depending on your source). She spent her lifetime working to empower the black community there, even as early as high school, when she led a protest against the segregation policy that prevented her class from holding its graduation… Continue Reading American Business Women’s Day
If the subject of economics isn’t your strong suit, welcome to the majority! That’s why North Carolina is lucky to have Mike Walden, a professor at NC State and economist with the NC Cooperative Extension Service. Walden is especially good at talking about economics in terms the rest of us can understand. His new book is North Carolina in the… Continue Reading “Meet Mike Walden” on the State of Things
I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, the eldest child of parents who’s idea of gastronomic adventure was going out to the local Hot Shoppes Cafeteria (you southerners just think the K&W and you’ll get the idea). It wasn’t until I was eighteen, when I grew my hair long, pierced my ear, and became a vegetarian that… Continue Reading A Yankee Vegetarian Considers North Carolina Barbecue
I have a great deal of respect for Bill Moyers. Moyers, a former White House Press Secretary for Lyndon Johnson, newspaper journalist, commentator for PBS, CBS, and NBC and now host of his own program, Bill Moyers Journal, is that rare breed of journalist who understands that issues are generally far more complex than a five-second sound bite. All of… Continue Reading Froth and Scum – Then and Now
Working in the IT division of the Press, I don’t get a chance to interact with many of our authors. E. Patrick Johnson is one author I have had the pleasure of corresponding with. Through my work with Johnson to select and refine our promotional page for his book (see below) I can attest to his humor, his appreciation for… Continue Reading Taking a Break with Sweet Tea
No clever blog entry today. Today is simply a day to remember those we lost in New York, in DC and in Pennsylvania. It’s a day to remember what it means to be an American, what it means to be a citizen and what it means to fight for the liberties and the rights our Founding Fathers provided for us… Continue Reading Seven Years Ago
It’s a Saturday night in mid-September, 1955. Dinner dishes have been cleared away, people in their comfortable homes are settling in for the evening. For entertainment, some turn to their trusty radio, still not sure about that expensive picture-box, the television. Those with television sets aren’t too sure this new-fangled thing is all that great, either. Skeptically, many of them… Continue Reading Today in History: Gunsmoke Premiers on Television
Because I teach a course on U.S. Women’s Political History and wrote a book about women in the Republican Party, a lot of people these days have been popping into my office or popping up on email to ask what I think of Sarah Palin‘s nomination for vice-president. As a citizen, I have my opinions (as, it seems, does everyone).… Continue Reading Guest Blogger Catherine Rymph on Sarah Palin and Her Role in History
The following is an email sent on 4 Sep 2008 by UNC Press author Lance Hill to his mailing list of friends. Lance, as some of you may remember from my entry on the anniversary of Katrina, is not only an acclaimed author, but also a professor at Tulane University and a long-time New Orleans resident. We present this message… Continue Reading Gustav Update from New Orleans
Less than a week after Hurricane Gustav kept many of us watching The Weather Channel, hoping New Orleans would be spared a repeat of the flooding damage brought by Hurricane Katrina, those of us in North Carolina are now watching as Tropical Storm Hanna is taking aim at the Carolina coastline. Many of us here at the UNC Press have… Continue Reading Hurricane Season Comes to the Carolinas
In some ways it seems difficult to believe that it was only a week ago that the Democratic Convention was taking place. Since then we’ve had a major hurricane seriously threaten New Orleans and the entire Gulf region, a second hurricane forming (one that’s taking aim at our own Carolina coastline) and the start of the Republican Convention. With the… Continue Reading Political Conventions: Part II
Our adoration and appreciation with WUNC’s “The State of Things” continues to grow on an almost weekly basis. Today, for instance, host Frank Stasio interviewed Anna Hayes on her new biography of Susie Marshall Sharp. Hayes’ book, “Without Precedent: The Life and Times of Susie Marshall Sharp” looks at the life of the first woman judge in the state of… Continue Reading “Meet Anna Hayes” on The State of Things
When Hurricane Katrina moved northwest through the Gulf of Mexico, hitting the Gulf Coast of the US in late August of 2005 I had only the briefest of connections to the city: my parents had attended a convention there in the late 60s, a friend I had grown up with lived there with his wife right after graduating from the… Continue Reading Hurricane Katrina: August 29, 2005
Perhaps you’ve noticed there’s been some politicking going on lately? It may have been too subtle for you to have noticed, especially if you live somewhere without radio, television or internet access (although, come to think of it, that would make reading this blog a bit difficult), but, indeed, it’s been going on for months (and months and months). But… Continue Reading Political Conventions: Part I
We have more than our share of serious baseball fans here at the UNC Press. Personally, I grew up a Washington Senators fan who turned his allegiances to the Baltimore Orioles after the Senators left town in the 1971. Our Associate Director here at the Press is also an Orioles fan as well as a fan of our own UNC… Continue Reading Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Yet another entry in our continuing series of “Why We Love WUNC Radio’s ‘The State of Things’” Glenda Gilmore is an eighth-generation North Carolinian who grew up in Greensboro during the 1960s. It wasn’t until she was teaching American History in a predominantly black school in South Carolina that she realized how her view of history had be skewed by… Continue Reading “Meet Glenda Gilmore” on WUNC’s ‘The State of Things’
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