North Carolina Books

This is an excellent source for anyone researching the surname McGaha or McGaughey. Also included are early Townsend and Dyer lines. These began in Pensylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and details the migration to Oklahoma.

Now that we're in the midst of a resurgence of Darwin applied to humans, it's all the more important to have historical perspective on earlier assimilations of Darwinism. Kelly's study is essential reading for understanding the assimilation in Germany. He shows that Darwinism, in its initial phase, was a jolly good blunt instrument for anti-clericism and the promotion of humanist philosophy. Popularizers, who were often scientists, did not typically take sides in the then great agitated question of Capitalism vs. Socialism. The embattled religious establishment tended to interpret any secularist advocacy as a prelude to socialism, but this was merely a bias of perspective. Kelly shows that the big capitalist establishment did not rush to embrace popularized Darwinism. Many socialists were Darwinians, and viewed the 'struggle for existence' as a confirmation of their revolutionary creed, but they also found in Darwin a justification of progress toward a society that transcended the brutal world of animal nature. Kelly corrects previous interpretations (especially Daniel Gasman) of popular Darwinism as a prelude to Nazi Darwinism. The alleged proto-Nazis of the Monist League were in reality humanists of an emphatic anti-clerical stripe.

Kelly's study has not enjoyed the attention that it deserves.

Hiram Caton

Great quality map with lots of detail. The only map I know of that shows all of the overlooks. What's neat is that the map also shows the surrounding areas (waterfalls, picnic areas, etc.) A quality product!

This book changed the way I nurse, the way I think of myself as a nurse and the way I think about nursing, in fact, the way I think about myself as a person. It makes me realize that if nurses are to be more than technicians, that nursing is primarily an ethical exercise. Who you are, your character, directs what you do with the knowledge you have. Any skill, nursing or otherwise, can be used for good or ill. It is the one wielding the skill that aims at the mark. Sometimes you miss, but if you don't aim, hitting is just dumb luck and a poor bet. I apply the same logic to physicians, plumbers, priests, politicians, judges, and garage mechanics. Margaret Sandelowski, I hope you read this. Thanks.

I don't know author, Benjamin Alpers, but I can only presume that the reason this book is back in print is because it is more relevant today than when it first came out in 1965. Americans today have no idea of all the dictatorship talk and publications, not to mention dictatorship signs, going on here in America during the period between 1920 and the 1950's.

Today, this has all escalated and if we want to learn about what is going on today politically, we must learn from what took place earlier in the last century.

On that note, shall we begin with a quote from the book that is all but unfathomable: "For a brief period between the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933 a small but varied group of influential citizens began to call for some variation of dictatorship in the United States". Yes, you read that right. At a very minimum, it should get you to thinking about how fragile democracy is and when the cultural producers of this country decide to transform into dictatorship, it will happen. Alpers defines cultural producers in this book to include professors, policymakers, speechwriters, presidents, filmmakers, novelists, and business leaders. It is this group that have "defined what views were "mainstream" and what views were "extreme"."

Here's a thought to chew on: Alpers writes, "Indeed, mere participation in a war could threaten to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state".

The book explains how friendly US business was to fascist Italy and how they admired Mussolini. "So relieved was the U.S. press at Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922 that few journalists bothered to report his hostility to democracy". Alpers writes that Paul Y. Anderson, a writer for the Nation wrote an article "entitled "Wanted: A Mussolini," ...certain powerful interests wanted to establish a dictatorship, this time mentioning two meetings-the first, called by Young, of bankers and industrialists in New York, the second in Chicago-to explore the possibilities".

In the February 13, 1933 issue of Barron's, the hope that FDR might be an "American Mussolini" was extolled. The examples continue, but I'll move on.

Some very interesting definitions of both Nazism and Fascism are given in this book. It will be difficult for many of us to discern their differences from today's government in the US. For example, in his very famous book, "As We Go Marching" published in 1944, author John T. Flynn enumerates eight attributes of fascism as follows:

1. a government with unrestrained powers
2. a dictator with unlimited powers
3. an economic system with private owners carrying out production and distribution under the auspices of a government plan
4. economic planning controlled by "great government bureaus" whose pronouncements had the force of law
5. a socialization of investment that "regiments" the uses of private captial and integrates government and private finance.
6. govenment maintenance of an adequate purchasing power by a permanent system of borrowing and spending
7. permanent militarism-supported by public spending
8. imperialism to provide a cause that could justify the great sacrifices of the people

HOW MANY OF THESE EIGHT EXIST IN THE US TODAY?

In fact, a weekly newsletter called "Facts and Fascism", points out Alpers, proclaimed that "America was in danger of losing to fascism at home". "Facts and Fascism" journalist George Seldes wrote, according to Alpers that "The real Fascists of America are never named in the commercial press....the Dupont, Ford, Hearst, Mellon and Rockefeller Empires...I call these elements Fascist".

Of course, these billionaires aren't mentioned in the press because they are part of the "cultural producers" elitist clubs.

Thorough in his research, Alpers includes a very relevant discussion of former Frankfurt School thinker, Erich Fromm. (Fromm is such an expert on the subtle conditioning of the mind, that he has an Afterword essay in the Centennial Edition of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four").

Describing Fromm as the most intellectually significant among the thinkers to view dictatorship, Alpers includes a quote from Fromm's "Escape from Freedom": "Modern advertising, newspapers, and electoral politics all added to this sense of alienation and automation. This proliferation of authorities led people to develop "pseudo-selves," mouthing received opinion without ever thinking critically. The pseudo-self emerged not because people were told to think the wrong things, but simply because they were told-and were willing to be told-what to think. All of this led to the attraction of the regimented crowd".

And finally (insofar as this review is concerned) Alpers discusses the real purpose of Orson Wells' radio broadcast of H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds" on October 30, 1938. (The significance of this broadcast is also mentioned in the book, Don't Weep for Me, America: How Democracy in America Became the Prince (While We Slept). In relation to Erich Fromm's theory above, this broadcast was connected to the debate about the causes of the regimented crowd. The federal government hired Hadley Cantril to study the panic caused by the broadcast. Cantril published his findings in "The Invasion from Mars". Cantril, according to Alpers, "felt that the panic was an indication of how easily the United States might fall victim to dictatorial propaganda...the audience's willingness to believe what the broadcast appeared to be telling it could be the first necessasry ingredient for such a [regimented] crowd to form". Here is the scary part: "Cantril hypothesized that some people lacked the critical ability or skepticism needed to disbelieve what the radio was telling them".

And THIS, my fellow readers, is what we have today: 300 million people believing what they hear from the establishment media, when in fact, it is only what they are intended to hear. Truth has nothing to do with it, see my review of U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication).

I love a good mystery and, of course, a twisting, turning surprise ending. I found all that and more in this wonderful first novel. Thankfully a friend recommended this book and said I wouldn't be sorry I spent time and money to read it; he was so right. The author has managed to weave a mystery among characters and locations so ordinary they could easily be my neighbors and so extraordinary they kept me turning pages until I finished this book in a single sitting - no small feat considering my busy schedule. I was sorry to finish as soon as I did because I wanted it to go on and on. Marianna Rich's character sketches remind me of an Oriental painting. With very few strokes of her pen, she is able to develop characters that come alive with depth, color and energy. I hope Marianna is at work this very minute on the next Lonnie Briggs mystery.

INCREDIBLE BOOK I AM PROUD TO OWN. THIS BEAUTIFUL BOOK, WITH ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHS IS FAR MORE THAN A COOKBOOK AS ITS HISTORICAL INFORMATION ALONE MAKES IT A MUST HAVE FOR MY LIBRARY. THIS IS ONE OF THE FEW BOOKS YOU CAN SAY GIVES YOU YOUR MONEY'S WORTH. YOU ARE IN FOR A VISUAL TREAT

A great read for anyone interested in North Carolina history! I bought copies for my whole family!

I am extremely impressed with Taylor's book, which explores the real and imagined consequences of the Civil War on families in border states, where the question of secession was the most complicated and the most fraught. This book not only documents (in writing that rises to the level of great literary writing -- a rarity in young historians) the actual occurrence of split families and what they had to say for themselves, but also the psychological, moral, and political implications of families at odds with each other. That is, this book gets beyond the idea of "the brother's war" as merely a curiosity or a sentimental metaphor, and shows how the state of the society -- the relations between men and women, white and black -- itself is revealed in the experience of these families, observed in extremis.

The writing, again, is extraordinary. Fans of Doris Kearn Goodwin or David McCullough will love this book, and will be pleased to know that Taylor is of the new generation of historians and likely to be around and writing for a very long time.

The changes that have taken place in ordinary life - especially in medicine - from the middle of the 20th Century up to the present leave most Americans ignorant of what it was like to live in a time before antibiotice, anesthetics and even a good working knowledge of the human body. This little book brings home to anyone interested in life during the 19th century what it was like for both doctor and patient.

This is a book for specialized interests rather than a broad view of the period but that very fact insures that it provides details and ephemera that would ordinarily not be covered in more generalized works. I am very happy to add it to my library of the period.