For historians of school desegregation, Louisville’s story challenges a narrative that has been dominated by resistance, disillusion, and failure. For citizens, these stories remind us how our predecessors struggled for equality in education and inspire us to keep up a fight that is far from over. Continue Reading Tracy E. K’Meyer: Busing and the Desegregation of Louisville Schools
My grandfather loved to tell me the long, frightening story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. When he finished telling the tale, I would ask him, “Grandad, tell it again.” And he would patiently tell me the story again. No memory from my childhood burns brighter than this story and its telling by my grandfather. Continue Reading William Ferris: A Little Bit of Story in Everything
Many tailgaters will “eat their competition” by serving the opposing mascot on the game’s menu. In The Southern Tailgating Cookbook, there are more suggestions and recipes that will show how to team-theme your tailgate and “eat the competition” on game day. Continue Reading Interview: Taylor Mathis on The Southern Tailgating Cookbook
Manufacturing jobs have all but disappeared as economic progress has been linked to an expanding financial sector as well as other “intellectual industries” like technology. This shift necessitates a robust service economy of workers who empty the trash, serve coffee, or perform other household tasks for those who are willing to pay. But those workers can no longer afford to live in the city. Continue Reading Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr.: Community History in the Path of “Progress”
Of course, white employers typically believed that their cooks loved them and cooked for them out of that love. When Ms. Deen claimed that she and Ms. Charles were “soul sisters,” she fell squarely into the tradition of declaring an employee to be just like a member of the family. Continue Reading Rebecca Sharpless on Paula Deen, Dora Charles, and the History of Southern Kitchens
Not only were the rebels young (“just like us” my students find themselves saying), but they actually failed. Government snipers shot many of the young rebels on sight, and those who survived were charged with treason and imprisoned on the Isle of Pines. In a surprising plot twist, however, the audacious Cuban rebels recast their military failure as a propaganda victory by claiming the date of the attack as the name of their movement—the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7). Continue Reading Tiffany A. Sippial: The 26th of July Movement: Remembering Failure, Celebrating Victory
In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina–one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791- ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819-1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War-era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the striving human spirit and the great divide that nearly sundered the nation.
In this interview on NC Bookwatch, Simpson speaks with host D.G. Martin about Two Captains from Carolina and the fascinating lives led by Grandy, former slave turned Boston abolitionist, and Maffit, a midshipman in the U.S. Navy at age thirteen turned legendary blockade runner. Simpson also explains his reasons for contrasting these two men with each other in this “nonfiction novel.” Continue Reading Video: Bland Simpson on NC Bookwatch
Additionally, the eBook business appears to be stabilizing. After several years of triple digit growth and prognostications that eBooks would take over up to 80% of the book market, we just saw a report from the Association of American Publishers that for March of this year (the last month for which we have full accounting), eBook sales compromised 25.5% of the overall trade market, up a mere 1.5% over the previous year. It now appears pretty clear that the old codex is going to be a more durable format than the compact disc, or the VHS cassette, or even the newspaper. As the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki pointed out in a recent column, “the truth is that the book is an exceptionally good piece of technology—easy to read, portable, durable, and inexpensive.” As long as physical books make up the considerable majority of the market, bookstores will survive and some will even flourish, giving publishers the type of robust marketplace they need to keep their businesses healthy. Continue Reading Why This Publisher Isn’t Disappointed by the Apple eBook Verdict
Our State strongly recommends a trip out to the beloved Outer Banks where you can visit the barrier islands and, “In Corolla and Shackleford Banks, you can see North Carolina’s most famous horses.” Continue Reading North Carolina Icons: Barrier Islands and Wild Horses
I’m a fan of the slide-style of nut cracker: You place a nut in a trough, pull back a spring-loaded weight, and let it go. You tend to get more halves that way. There’s a bit of mess from all the shells, so I usually do it outside, spreading out newspaper to catch the shells. You also can use some of the shells to spread in a garden. Continue Reading Interview: Kathleen Purvis on Pecans
In an interview with North Carolina Bookwatch host D. G. Martin, Cecelski describes the many threads he followed to unlock the mystery of Abraham Galloway, now proudly identifying him as a part of the pantheon of North Caorlina’s greatest heroes. Cecelski delves into the leadership Galloway exerted before, during, and after the Civil War. Continue Reading Video: David Cecelski on NC Bookwatch
Our State explains the best way to appreciate the pioneer’s of aviation: “Stand at the base of the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk, right where it all began.” Then, just a few miles to the south you can visit Jockey’s Ridge State Park, home to the East Coast’s tallest active sand dune, where Our State recommends, “Want to be a daredevil? Try hang-gliding. Rather keep your feet in the sand? Fly a kite. Continue Reading North Carolina Icons: Wright Brothers and Jockey’s Ridge
In addition to attending the AAUP meeting, last month I was pleased to be able to announce that the Mellon Foundation had awarded a grant of $100,000 to UNC Press for the next year to aid in our experimentation with new digital publishing models. It will significantly enhance our exploration of a broad range of proposals from our new “Digital First” initiative, to our efforts to begin developing a model for publishing digital humanities projects, to exploring new distribution methods. Continue Reading UNC Press to Study Digital Publishing Models with Mellon Grant
Both of the new UNC Press Civil War Shorts originally appeared in The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond, edited by Gary W. Gallagher, a collection that combines fresh evidence with the reinterpretation of standard sources to testify to the enduring impact of the Civil War on our national consciousness and refocus our view of the third day at Gettysburg. Continue Reading Two New Ebook Shorts: Excerpts from The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond
July 1st marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and to kick of the celebration C-SPAN’s American History TV will be live all day long from the battlefield on June 30th. The weekly program “American Artifacts” has produced a 30-minute special, “The Monuments at Gettysburg,” where Carol Reardon and Tom Vossler take viewers around Gettysburg and showcase nine of their favorite monuments. Continue Reading Preview: C-SPAN’s coverage of Gettysburg 150th Anniversary
In reality, scholarship in the fields of Chicana/o and Latina/o studies defies such easy simplifications, revealing that the struggle for citizenship, inclusion, and social justice in this country has historic, deep roots, and that forces for change do not always begin and end in Washington. Continue Reading UNC Press books in Chicano/a Studies offer timely insights
In an interview with North Carolina Bookwatch host D. G. Martin, Riggs talks about the richness of resources and the comparatively pristine state of North Carolina’s coastline and barrier islands. Continue Reading Video: Stanley Riggs on NC Bookwatch
The funding will be used to study expanded publication models that can successfully and sustainably connect the emerging forms of scholarship that rely on digital and computer-based methods with the book and journal formats long associated with university press publishing. Continue Reading UNC Press Receives Grant from Mellon Foundation
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