July 18, 2012

Excerpt: Transpacific Field of Dreams, by Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu

The current scholarly consensus holds that no single individual created baseball; rather, it evolved incrementally from various forms of bat-and-ball folk games, including British rounders. This cultural form of transatlantic hybrid pedigree grew into a modern team sport in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York in the early nineteenth century, with each of these burgeoning northeastern American cities developing its distinctive formats of the game. Continue Reading Excerpt: Transpacific Field of Dreams, by Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu

Categories American History/American Studies/Asian Studies/Excerpts/History/Sports
July 17, 2012

New Omnibus E-Book: Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s Shop Classic Collection

This Omnibus Ebook brings together the first three books into a collection of Woodwright classics. Designed for both woodworking novices and for more seasoned woodworkers looking for enjoyable projects, these books feature step-by-step instructions, complete with easy-to-follow photographs and measured drawings. Continue Reading New Omnibus E-Book: Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s Shop Classic Collection

Categories Art / Architecture/Craft/UNC Press News
July 16, 2012

Excerpt: The Armchair Birder Goes Coastal by John Yow

We walked toward the west end of the island and turned around to set up Sto’s scope with the sun at our backs, and from that vantage point we saw a rookery just seething with birds, not only the ibises but every heron and egret imaginable, including the elusive night herons. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Armchair Birder Goes Coastal by John Yow

Categories Birds & Birding/Excerpts/Nature
July 9, 2012

Excerpt: Creating Consumers, by Carolyn M. Goldstein

Like Marye Dahnke, dozens of home economists carved out spaces for themselves in the consumer products industries in the early 1920s. While home economists in business struggled to win legitimacy within the American Home Economics Association (AHEA), they also faced challenges convincing corporate executives and managers that their expertise was necessary to effective consumer-oriented production and marketing. Continue Reading Excerpt: Creating Consumers, by Carolyn M. Goldstein

Categories American Studies/Cooking / Food/Excerpts/Gender Studies/Labor Studies/Women's Studies
July 2, 2012

Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

African Americans now had both more freedom to move about and more reason to believe they could begin to live the lives they had previously only imagined. For many, this meant reuniting with family, so they urgently attempted to get to the places where they thought their loved ones might be. Sometimes they found them there; other times the people were gone. Continue Reading Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Excerpts/History
June 28, 2012

Video: Manisha Sinha on the Origins of Abolitionism

When we think of the Abolition movement, a common history textbook answer is that the Abolition movement began when William Lloyd Garrison started publishing his Liberator in 1831, but the roots of American abolitionism are fairly long. Continue Reading Video: Manisha Sinha on the Origins of Abolitionism

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/History
June 27, 2012

First African American Marines Honored with Congressional Gold Medal

Today, 70 years after those first African Americans joined the Marines, Montford Point veterans are being formally honored with the Congressional Gold Medal. Continue Reading First African American Marines Honored with Congressional Gold Medal

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/History/Military Studies
June 26, 2012

Vicky Wells receives 2012 AAUP Constituency Award

We are very happy to share the news that UNC Press director of contracts and subsidiary rights Vicky Wells was presented with the AAUP 2012 Constituency Award at the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses last week in Chicago. The AAUP, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, is comprised of 134 nonprofit scholarly presses. The award… Continue Reading Vicky Wells receives 2012 AAUP Constituency Award

Categories The Book Biz/UNC Press News
June 25, 2012

Excerpt: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement, by Randal Maurice Jelks

Mays’s own life took him from the nadir of Jim Crow in the Deep South, to the long march of civil rights agitation and education, to the culmination of the Black Freedom struggle in the late 1960s. Long before King began his ministry in Montgomery, Mays had advocated that black churches become centers of civil rights activism, and he was delighted when they nurtured a democratic movement that brought down the walls of racial segregation in the United States. Continue Reading Excerpt: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement, by Randal Maurice Jelks

Categories African American Studies/Biography / Autobiography/Civil Rights/Excerpts/Religion/Southern Studies
June 22, 2012

Excerpt: Commonsense Anticommunism by Jennifer Luff

Doubting the capacity of the law to distinguish between legitimate militancy and subversive radicalism, labor conservatives disapproved of legislation outlawing sedition. Instead they pursued a voluntarist program of evangelizing about the evils of Communism and excluding Communists from AFL unions. In the aftermath of the first Red Scare, labor conservatives formed a crucial backstop against reaction. In the late 1930s, the situation changed. Alienated from the New Deal order and at odds with liberal union leaders in the competing Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), labor conservatives abandoned commonsense anticommunism for calculated red-baiting. Continue Reading Excerpt: Commonsense Anticommunism by Jennifer Luff

Categories Excerpts/Labor Studies/Political Science/Public Policy
June 21, 2012

Video: Mark E. Neely Jr. on the advantage of the U.S. Constitution during the Civil War

“Because the Civil War, by chance, began right at the beginning of an administration, that part of the Constitution that gave the president a four-year term and made the president the commander-in-chief was extremely important. That meant that, barring impeachment or assassination, there would be a determined Republican in the White House fighting the South until March of 1865.”—Mark E. Neely Jr. Continue Reading Video: Mark E. Neely Jr. on the advantage of the U.S. Constitution during the Civil War

Categories American History/Civil War/History/Video
June 19, 2012

Excerpt: Crabgrass Crucible, by Christopher C. Sellers

In the United States, even from Bunner’s time, what nourished the nature love of the more and less scientifically qualified alike was a shared suburban experience. It was one not so much of home buying as home owning. Nor was it reducible to suburban dwellers’ relationship with “the land,” however fraught. What finally secured the breadth of environmentalism’s appeal was how nature love itself had become ever more suffused with anxieties about human health. Continue Reading Excerpt: Crabgrass Crucible, by Christopher C. Sellers

Categories American History/Environmental Studies/Excerpts/History/Nature
June 18, 2012

Jeff Broadwater: James Madison, the Constitution, and the War of 1812

For all his genius as a political theorist (we remember him as “the Father of the Constitution”) and despite remarkable success as a politician (he lost only one election in a public career spanning forty years) James Madison has never been ranked among the greatest of presidents. The War of 1812 permanently stained his reputation. Yet Madison’s wartime leadership deserves a second look. Continue Reading Jeff Broadwater: James Madison, the Constitution, and the War of 1812

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Military History/Political Science/Politics
June 14, 2012

Michael H. Hunt: Panetta on tour in an Asia without history

Panetta’s formal comments and casual remarks reveal little interest in this rich past, no insights that would be instructive, and some generalizations that are distinctly misleading if not wrongheaded. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: Panetta on tour in an Asia without history

Categories American History/Asian Studies/Columnists/Guest Bloggers/History/Michael H. Hunt
June 13, 2012

Patrick M. Erben: Learning Foreign Languages Increases Inter-Human Understanding

What matters more than the goal of language learning is its motivation. Instead of regarding “foreign” language instruction as a means for preserving academic privilege or meeting the demands of a global marketplace, we need to embrace the acquisition of languages as a preparation for one of the most fundamental experiences we share as human beings—the encounter with difference. Continue Reading Patrick M. Erben: Learning Foreign Languages Increases Inter-Human Understanding

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers/History/Literature
June 12, 2012

Excerpt: Memories of Conquest, by Laura E. Matthew

The extent of these Nahuas’ and Oaxacans’ participation in the invasions of 1524-28 undermines the very notion of a Spanish conquest. Their lives as Indian conquistadors in Guatemala suggest that we still have a long way to go to understand the lived experience of colonialism by the American continents’ indigenous peoples. Continue Reading Excerpt: Memories of Conquest, by Laura E. Matthew

Categories Excerpts/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
June 11, 2012

Altina L. Waller: The Hatfield-McCoy Feud

What is missing here is any social and economic context. True, the Civil War is the film’s encompassing social explanation, but it leaves me wondering why the set of social and economic circumstances that confronted folks in post war Appalachia is completely ignored. In the Tug Valley, as in all Appalachia and even the entire South, economic decline was a serious threat to almost everyone. Continue Reading Altina L. Waller: The Hatfield-McCoy Feud

Categories American History/American Studies/Appalachian Studies/Author blog entry/Film/Guest Bloggers/History/Southern Studies