March 10, 2015

Timothy P. Spira: The Lure of Waterfalls

Waterfalls are constantly changing. A rapid surge in stream flow following a heavy rain can turn a modest waterfall into a raging torrent of water. Dry periods can transform a waterfall into a trickle of water (much to the disappointment of waterfall enthusiasts). A slight breeze can elicit a shimmering spray, and if the light is right, a colorful rainbow. If passing clouds obscure the sun, the brightly reflective waterfall changes to softer hues, and the rainbow vanishes into thin air. Continue Reading Timothy P. Spira: The Lure of Waterfalls

Categories Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/Hiking/Nature/Travel
March 2, 2015

R. Douglas Hurt on Agriculture and Confederate Power

A lesser known failure of the Confederacy, however, involved agriculture. In 1861, Southerners considered agriculture an element of power similar to military power, which, combined, would guarantee secession and independence. They were confident that not only would Union armies not prevail but also that their own agricultural capability would prevent the Union from starving the Confederacy into submission. Southerners could fight, feed themselves, and use cotton as a diplomatic tool–assumptions that in the minds of many already made the Confederacy independent. Continue Reading R. Douglas Hurt on Agriculture and Confederate Power

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
February 25, 2015

Lauren J. Silver: Beyond Snapshot Stories: The Power in Youth Representation

2014 was marked by protests across the nation insisting that Black Lives Matter. Many decry the justice system, which has failed to indict officers and vigilantes who have killed unarmed black children, while girl victims receive little notice in the press. We have an urgent need to tell and listen to deeper, more nuanced stories about these youth and other youth of color who remain either invisible or hyper-visible in marked, stereotyped ways. Continue Reading Lauren J. Silver: Beyond Snapshot Stories: The Power in Youth Representation

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Sociology/Women's Studies
February 23, 2015

Richard Schweid: Will Warming U.S.-Cuba Relations Reveal More Classic Car Treasures on the Island?

One thing a détente between the U.S. and Cuba will do is reveal the truth or falsehood of an urban myth in Havana, which holds that numerous pristine 1950s Detroit models are stored in secret garages across the city. Continue Reading Richard Schweid: Will Warming U.S.-Cuba Relations Reveal More Classic Car Treasures on the Island?

Categories Author blog entry/Cuba/Guest Bloggers/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
February 19, 2015

Marianne Gingher: ABA Winter Institute 2015

Friendliness was the vibe of my entire experience at ABA’s Winter Institute. I’d expected to meet several North Carolina-based booksellers, but I wasn’t prepared for the tremendous interest booksellers from California, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, and Ohio expressed. The thing was, they’d come to North Carolina, seen it with their own eyes, spent time here, liked what they saw, and clearly wanted to share a sense of that experience with their patrons. “Read these folks!” I told them. “You will get all sorts of perspectives on the state, from politics to lyrical meditations on its beauty.” Continue Reading Marianne Gingher: ABA Winter Institute 2015

Categories Author blog entry/Events/Guest Bloggers/Literature/Local Indy Booksellers/North Carolina/The Book Biz/UNC Press News
February 17, 2015

Xiaoming Zhang: Deng Xiaoping and China’s Invasion of Vietnam

Deng Xiaoping’s paramount political status and strength of personality played a major role in shaping China’s foreign policy during the last decade of the Cold War, opposing Soviet hegemony while allying with the United States and other Western countries in order to gain their support for China’s economic reform. Continue Reading Xiaoming Zhang: Deng Xiaoping and China’s Invasion of Vietnam

Categories American History/Asian Studies/Author blog entry/Economics/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History/Military Studies/Politics
February 16, 2015

Adam Wesley Dean on an Industrial North and an Agricultural South

Of the North’s population, over 14.5 million lived in rural areas with a population of less than 2,500, while only 5 million lived in what any reasonable person could call an “urban society.” Roughly 60% of northerners worked on farms. Most farms were small, with the average varying between 113 and 169 acres in the states that stayed loyal to the union. The vast majority of historians and museums have long known these figures and their implications for understanding the war. Why, then, does the state board of education cling to the old story? Perhaps the public feels at ease in labeling the slave-holding Confederacy as something distant, something foreign, a relic of a bygone era, rather than a society in many ways just as capitalist and worldly as our own. Continue Reading Adam Wesley Dean on an Industrial North and an Agricultural South

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
February 13, 2015

2015 African American History Month Reading List

The study of African American history is a year-round endeavor for UNC Press, but in honor of African American History Month, we’d like to highlight the great new work we’ve been able to publish in this field recently. Here are books on African American history, culture, and modern society from UNC Press over the past year, plus a few that will be available later this spring and are available for pre-order now. Continue Reading 2015 African American History Month Reading List

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/Current Events/History/UNC Press Authors
February 10, 2015

Gary W. Gallagher on Working with Harry W. Pfanz

Esteemed Gettysburg historian Harry W. Pfanz passed away recently at the age of 93. Founding editor of the Civil War America series Gary W. Gallagher recalls the publication of Pfanz’s landmark Gettysburg trilogy. Continue Reading Gary W. Gallagher on Working with Harry W. Pfanz

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/UNC Press News
February 2, 2015

Thomas J. Brown on Confederate Retweeting

Twitter is more similar to commemorative forms that have flourished since the mid-twentieth century. It appeals to commercialized recreation rather than ritualized reverence, much as the Confederate battle flag gained visibility through college sports and sustained influence through sales of t-shirts and beach towels. Enthusiasm for social media is part of the celebration of technology that has recently reshaped memory of the Hunley submarine. The concept of historical “live tweeting” resembles efforts of Civil War re-enactors to reproduce conditions of the past, such as the real-time unfolding of events, though my day-by-day chronicle does not pretend to offer the “period rush” some hobbyists find in simulation. Continue Reading Thomas J. Brown on Confederate Retweeting

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History
January 29, 2015

Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

In 1966, Charles “Charlie” Scott (b. 1948 in NYC) became the first African American student to attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship. He decided to attend UNC rather than basketball powerhouse Davidson College after a wrenching moment at a small café in Davidson, North Carolina. Former Davidson College basketball star Terry Holland, who both played and later served as assistant coach under the college’s legendary coach Lefty Driesell, and UNC law professor and civil rights attorney Daniel H. Pollitt, who was a passionate advocate for social justice in Chapel Hill during the 1950s and 1960s, vividly recall Scott’s historic decision. Pollitt worked with Dean Smith, UNC’s beloved basketball coach (1961-1997) and Robert Seymour, progressive minister at the Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, to recruit Charlie Scott and to help integrate the university community. Continue Reading Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Sports
January 27, 2015

Doug Orr: A Young Pete Seeger Encounters Music of the Appalachians

Pete was seventeen years of age in 1936 when he accompanied his father to Asheville to attend Lunsford’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. During Fiona Ritchie and my Wayfaring Strangers book interview with Pete at his home above the Hudson River, Pete recalled that “ordinary working people were making fantastically good music.” The youthful Pete Seeger was mesmerized as Lunsford presided on the spotlighted stage over a parade of square-dance teams, family string bands, singers, fiddlers, and banjo players. There Pete had his formative exposure to the five-string banjo played by Samantha Bumgarner, from whom he acquired his first such instrument. Pete recalled that Lunsford patiently showed him basic banjo licks that Pete would practice and perfect over subsequent years. Continue Reading Doug Orr: A Young Pete Seeger Encounters Music of the Appalachians

Categories Appalachian Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Music/North Carolina
January 26, 2015

Video: Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr. on what history tells us about our present

Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr., author of Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco, explains how history might not be synonymous with the past. Continue Reading Video: Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr. on what history tells us about our present

Categories History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Latino Studies/Video
January 21, 2015

Brian K. Feltman: Blurred Lines: Prisoners of War, Deserters, and Bowe Bergdahl

Accusations of desertion prompted many of Bergdahl’s supporters to reconsider their positions and left several congressmen scrambling to delete early tweets that praised his service. While many Americans may be surprised by the heated controversy surrounding Bergdahl’s capture, the Bergdahl affair is only the most recent example of the hazy line separating deserters and prisoners of war. Continue Reading Brian K. Feltman: Blurred Lines: Prisoners of War, Deserters, and Bowe Bergdahl

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History/Military Studies
January 14, 2015

Christina D. Abreu: In Honor of Professor Juan Flores

Criticism and embrace of identity terms like “Hispanic” and “Latino/a” have been longstanding in the field of Latino/a Studies. Puerto Ricans, Flores argued, share more in common with African Americans than with other Latino/a groups. He contended that Puerto Ricans and African Americans experience similar forms of racial and ethnic subordination in the United States because of parallels in their location in urban areas, their socioeconomic status, and their position as colonized subjects of the same nation-state. Continue Reading Christina D. Abreu: In Honor of Professor Juan Flores

Categories Author blog entry/Cuba/Cultural Studies/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Latino Studies/Music
January 9, 2015

Christopher C. Sellers: How a Mid-Century LA Environmentalist Got Beyond John Muir

A century out from Muir’s death, humanity’s mounting influence on the planet, and what we now know about that influence, have made a truly pristine nature ever more difficult, even impossible, to find. No place on earth stays untouched by a phenomenon like climate change. To be sure, we still need our Yosemites, not least for the transcendent encounters that Muir and his descendants have helped us to find in them. Yet in a time when human impacts have turned planetary in scale, the project of protecting our wildest places has become far more bound up with what we do in our cities, suburbs, and factories than Muir ever imagined Continue Reading Christopher C. Sellers: How a Mid-Century LA Environmentalist Got Beyond John Muir

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers
December 23, 2014

Glenn David Brasher’s Civil War Top 10 from 2014

Do we have a new annual tradition on our hands? Last year over on our CivilWar150 blog, Glenn David Brasher gave us a great roundup of Civil War-related highlights from throughout the year. He’s back at it again with 2014’s big news in Civil War history. You’ll find elections, debates, satire, sincerity, and more. Continue Reading Glenn David Brasher’s Civil War Top 10 from 2014

Categories African American Studies/Civil War/History/Video