North Carolina Books

We purchased this book after move to North Carolina, and it has come in so handy. We have been able to go to a couple of the places we found in the book, but have not had as much time as we have hoped to really use it. My husband has gone through it cover to cover and marked so many places we plan on visiting. Whether you live in the area, or just plan a short visit, I think this book is a great source.

This is such a great find. It is an extensive listing of artists/studios/gallery's in western NC. We are avid art seekers and always use this guide whenever we head to this area and constantly recommend it to friends. I owned the first editions as well.

On one trip we followed the detailed instructions, taking us deep into the mountains way off the main road, and located a small shack full of beautiful pottery. The door was open, no one around (the artist's home was up the hill a little ways) and there was a note indicating if we wanted to purchase something to please fill out a sales ticket, add the appropiate tax, and stick it and your money in the cookie jar! It was art on the Honor system, it was so wonderful.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in all kinds of art - from large gallery/gift stores to small shacks deep in the woods.

Great book by a person in the know. As a past resident of the area it was really interesting learning more about the area.

Like natives in many of the most beautiful parts of our country, those in the cloud-laced mountains of Western North Carolina complain about growth and change even though they're the ones who opened the door to it - in this case, development of the region's tourism and second-home economy.

In "Creating the Land of the Sky," Richard D. Starnes, a history professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, offers a compelling analysis and history of tourism development in Western North Carolina.

With dogged research and an engaging narrative writing style, Starnes traces the history of tourism in the region to the early nineteenth century, when low-country planters fled the "fever season" each summer to the milder climates of the mountain South. "Whole communities took on new characters," Starnes writes, "as mountain towns such as Hendersonville, Flat Rock and Asheville became seasonal centers of southern aristocracy."

Starnes' book is packed with insider political tales, such as how the Blue Ridge Parkway got its route, and delightful, sometimes devilish, characters, including many we know well in other contexts. Consider these words that novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote to his mother about Edwin Wiley Grove, the quinine tonic magnate who built the luxurious Grove Park Inn of Asheville: "Grove is a great man because he sells more pills than anyone else," Wolfe wrote, complaining that tourism had changed the culture and values of the city so that wealth, rather than character, determined greatness. "Greater Asheville," Wolfe wrote, "does not mean `100,000 by 1930,' that we are 4 times as civilized as our grandfathers because we go four times as fast in automobiles, because buildings are four times as tall."

As a native of the region himself, Starnes' insights are astute and often poignant. But while some of his subjects - such as Harrah's Cherokee Casino, opened in 1997 - seem deserving of criticism for changing mountain culture and morals, Starnes handles them all with the fairness and respect you'd expect from a distinguished historian. "Tourism did bring progress, government aid and new opportunities to western North Carolina," he concludes. "It also created an atmosphere that led to the exploitation of labor, land and culture."

Whether you're a native North Carolinian, or a visitor like me (one of the thousands of Floridians who crowd these mountains each summer), I highly recommend Starnes' book to anyone who cares about the majestic "Land of the Sky."

I didn't know Huck Finn had a married sister until I read Crusoe's Island. I found the lady and her autobiography warmly engaging and wonderful. She says 'pine straw' and we say 'pine shats', but the smell of each, like her book, is lasting.

I didn't know Huck Finn had a married sister until I read Crusoe's Island. I found the lady and her autobiography warmly engaging and wonderful. She says 'pine straw' and we say 'pine shats', but the smell of each, like her book, is lasting.

Dr. Lyn Turner's knowledge and passion for the North Carolina coast is evident in this fabulous book. Get it today!

If you are one to travel to new and fascinating places with little money to exhaust, then you are in luck! "The Crystal Coast: North Carolina's Treasure by the Sea" is your best bet for an illustravtive vacation at a fraction of an airline ticket. Lyn Turner and Diane Hardee truely capture in picture the essence of North carolina's coast. The reader is captivated by the simplicity and sheer beauty of this North American gem. You feel as though you are a part of the pictures, and eagerly await the next turn of the page, goose-bumps are abound! The captions that are spread throughout the book are colorful and give wonderful explanations to the illustrations. The photos of day to day life on the Crystal Coast such as fishing, surfing and most of all dining make the reader even more curious of this majestic land! The last picture of the book is my favorite, it was a perfect ending to a great trip!! Do your self a favor....buy this book, and share it!! Your sure to acquire new friends!!

While I do not disagree with the previous review, I felt the need to point out that illegal immigrants are certainly NOT the only ones forming the backbone of the workforce at these rural meatpacking plants. Indeed, in the small Midwestern town in which I grew up, meatpacking is just about the only job that pays something resembling a living wage for those who choose to stay in the rural Midwest. And from observing the people I knew who worked there, believe me, it's not exactly living high on the hog. In my opinion, these blue collar workers are being squeezed just about as hard as they can be, and not enough light is shed on that fact. But for many people who choose to live in the place of their birth (or a place they've come to call home), they don't have much choice when it comes to where to work.

If you're not already aware of the heroic struggle immigrants undergo as they pursue the American dream, this book will clue you in.

We've all heard xenophobes rant about immigrants taking jobs away from American workers. Now meet the immigrants who sign on to jobs Americans won't touch -- the ones with no safety nets -- low wages and no benefits, i.e., no paid vacations, no profit-sharing, no health insurance (despite dangerous working conditions), no compensation for loss of limbs, no pension plan, no social security contributions.

One's perspective is changed with the realization that these new Americans are proud to be working at a place where the hourly wage is a whopping $7-8/hr. If this is the American dream, imagine what life must be like at home!

Fink goes to work in a meat-packing plant in Iowa for an up-close look at the conditions and environment in which immigrants (mostly from Mexico and Central America) toil to support families both here and in their homelands. Her sensitivity to the workers' pride and plight, and her empathy with their every-day existence is remarkable for an American. She is to be commended for her courage in wading into a stark and noisy reality -- one not altogether known by many U.S. citizens -- while retaining her writer's objectivity.

This book is highly recommended.

In a speech before the Organization of American Historians, scholar Jacquelyn Dowd Hall offered a window onto "the long civil rights movement" -- a struggle for human rights, economic and social citizenship, and human dignity that began long before Brown v. Board of Education and continued long after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

In her pathbreaking book, Defying Dixie, professor Glenda Gilmore gives texture and character to the long civil rights movement, using indigenous southern activists, black and white, to give her story shape. These activists, from the fearless and foolhardy Lovett Fort-Whiteman to the brilliant and indomitable Pauli Murray, all faced the demon of American white supremacy and did their best to slay it. They did not always prevail with strategies they dreamed up and pursued, but their vision and dedication bequeathed us a social movement, more expansive than the classic civil rights movement, that still informs drives for justice and equity.

Gilmore's book moves beyond the tired debates of Cold War historiography and the simple hagiography of civil rights heroes to give us a dynamic movement filled with complex characters. In giving these people their due, and rooting them in American soil, Defying Dixie helps us to understand the promise and possibilities of American politics, and to contend with the present in which we live.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore's DEFYING DIXIE: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919 - 1950 is the history of the civil rights movement from that time until the early 1950s. It gives inside history, interviews and information on how the Civil Rights movement that we are aware of today, came about. In the beginning, the Communist party was deeply involved. Their plan was to get the workers of America - black and white - to fight for better salaries from the companies they worked for. The only way to accomplish that was to get the two groups to work together. Naturally, the South, with its legacy of slavery, wasn't too happy with the mixing of the races. The companies, to keep their profits high, wanted to continue to pay blacks less than they paid whites and the only way to do that was to keep them separate. Many residents of the South didn't want blacks involved in the job market because they felt it would reduce their ability to have those jobs. There were, however, many people, of both races, who were determined that segregation/Jim Crow, would end. They were brave enough to defy the system and as a result, they frequently ended up in jail or worse.

During the Second World War, as Stalin took power, the involvement of the Communist party began to lose its appeal. The House Un-American Activities became concerned and the FBI spied on Communist and suspects. Any contact with a Communist could cause problems. It didn't stop those who were determined to force America to honor what it claimed it went to war for, from pushing their agenda for social and economic equality for all, even though many of them suffered for it.

Gilmore has written a heart rending account that covers history that is either missing or glossed over in our history books. So often we don't know the brutal history that brought us where we are today and Gilmore lets us know in no uncertain terms. Some of the unfair situations that blacks face will break your heart. It is a book every American should read in order to understand where we have come from and where we are going. It should be required reading for both high school and college students.

Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

The 1898 "race riot," of Wilmington, NC, which more correctly should be understood for what it really was, "an ongoing white pogrom against blacks," or "a white supremacist insurrection against a legitimately elected interracial government," remains an enduring metaphor for how, "at every appropriate opportunity throughout American history," white Americans have, even today, found ways to betray democracy in the name of the dying ideology of white supremacy. America's imperceptibly slow evolution towards democracy has been nothing if not an uphill struggle against the reactionary forces of "white resistance" to "true democracy."

Never was the white intent to resist change towards democracy, social and political justice and equality, more raw, open and obvious, never more starkly and conscientiously used to snuff out democracy, nor more brutal, than in the 1898 Wilmington "white vigilante resurrection." And for those who might think that this was but an accident or aberration of American history, the attacks on the duly elected government of Wilmington were typical of the times. As always, they rallied the anti-democratic forces to action in the local churches. Even today, the white instigators of the 1898 riots are still very much revered: taught about in schools as heroes, with statutes of them standing tall in the town square.

Unlike today, when the U.S. has become little more than a "greater co-prosperity sphere" for the "moneyed (mostly) foreign interests of the global economy" such as the Saudi Royal family, Christian and Jewish Zionists, and now for Communist Chinese economic expansion, there was once a time, when "true democracy" was about to break out in America. Never was there a more pregnant time for it to do so than in 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Story

More than a century ago, in the aftermath of the "race riots" of 1871 in Cape Fear North Carolina, where the river ran red with the blood of its black victims, a historic experiment in interracial democracy blossomed in Wilmington, NC. Although Wilmington was composed of a thriving black majority, one of the few in all of the U.S. at that time (and now at any time), its government nevertheless was composed of a coalition of both races.

This coalition of "working level" blacks and whites, an unheard of democratic oasis in a desert of southern racist reaction, posed a threat not just to white supremacy, but also to the "Southern planter and Northern industrial class" that had traditionally run the Southern slave system that "pitted" white workers against "black slaves." [The global economy now carries out a similar program, writ large.]

In the 1898 elections, when these conservative forces failed to undo the interracial coalition at the ballot box, they sought to do so by "the gun." (giving a paradoxical twist and echo to Malcolm X's refrain: The Ballot or the Bullet). And out of the ashes of the ensuing coup d'etat was born a century of Jim Crow and Apartheid, American style.

And as Paul Harvey would say "the rest of the story" is that even today, when we have both a "Black man" and a "White woman" running for the U.S. Presidency, just beneath the veneer of racial tranquility, America remains more like "post riot Wilmington" than like the interracial coalition that the reactionary vigilante forces overthrew in 1898.

As the authors noted so carefully in the preface: " the past seems not to have receded significantly, even today. In some very fundamental ways, change [towards democracy] has come slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly [so]."

An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.



An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.

First let me say that I rarely read non-fiction and even when I do, I rarely manage to finish an entire book of it. Democracy Betrayed is an exception. The writing was clear, precise, right-on, and interesting. And, perhaps most importantly, educational. I was born and raised in North Carolina and knew nothing--absolutely nothing--about the Wilmington Race Riots or the subject of Cecelski's essay Abraham Galloway. I am female and was a victim of gender based racial violence myself so I was aware of the issues raised in Gilmore's essay and White's essay, but I have never seen the issues written about so well. What I most like about this book is that it destroys stereotypes about class and race. After all isn't it the most well-to-do who most benefit from race violence so why should we be surprised to learn that it was not the so-called "white trash" who began the racial massacre in 1898, but the rich, the ones who were most likely to benefit from forcing the elected fusionist party officials out of office and placing themselves in their offices. I never knew--it certainly wasn't taught in my public school--that in 1896 every office in North Carolina was held by a progressive fusionist party member, elected by the fusion of lower class whites and blacks. Imagine how different this state would be, how advanced in talent and intelligence, if the massacre hadn't occurred, if black doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, newspaper editors and writers, etc, hadn't been forced from the state and if the elected officials had been allowed to remain in office. Perhaps what is most important is the book succeeds in "drawing public attention to the tragedy", a tragedy that is apparantly very much in the consciousness of Black Wilmington citizens and very much needs to be in the consciousness of all humans.

I recently just finished reading this collection of stories about North Carolina. This book is filled with intriguing mysteries and legends about the Tar Heel state. The more famous story of Roanoke Island is covered here, as well as many others most from outside the region have probably never heard about. The stories include tales about shipwrecks, anomalies of nature as well as disappearing people. I found particularly interesting the story entitled 'The Devil's Tramping Ground' itself, as well as 'The Strange Hoof-Marks at Bath' and the mystery of 'The Brown Mountain Lights'. These alone will capture anyone's imagination and spark a desire to explore the hills of North Carolina. All in all a very enjoyable book, and if you like a good collection of short stories this is a good one for you. The fact that they all come from a particular region and are researched North Carolina mystery stories makes it even more facinating and entertaining.

Seeing as how "I'm a Tarheel born, I'm a Tarheel bred, and when I die I'm a Tarheel dead," I am of course fascinated by the legends and stories of the Old North State, just as John Harden was. In 1946 and 1947, Harden hosted a radio show called Tales of Tarheelia, in which he recounted many of the state's legendary stories and mysteries. Interest in that radio series and Harden's commitment to preserving these stories that could be lost forever if not put down in writing led to the publication of this book, The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories, in 1949. One should note the fact that the stories collected here are indeed mysteries as opposed to, say, ghost stories (of which North Carolina can boast of her fair share); these stories won't give you the creeps, but they will fascinate you and sharpen whatever interest you have in the history of the state of North Carolina.

When you talk about North Carolina mysteries, you must of course start at the very beginning - the Lost Colony. The first English settlement in the New World was made in the late 16th century at Roanoke, and it was here that the first non-native American child was born (Virginia Dare); when the long-delayed supply ship returned to these shores, the entire colony had disappeared completely, leaving behind a single clue as to the colonists' fate: the carving of the word Croatoan on a tree. This, North America's first mystery, remains as compelling and unsolved today as it was over four hundred years ago. The famous Brown Mountain Lights of western North Carolina, of which many may have heard, necessarily earn a chapter. The Devil's Tramping Ground to which the title refers is a circular spot of land in Chatham County in which the devil is said to pace each night as he thinks up his evil plans. The circle has a diameter of forty feet, and nothing will grow inside it; also, any material placed inside the circle will disappear overnight. A similar story involves the Magic Horse Tracks in the town of Bath; this series of holes remain fresh and unobscured after some two hundred years, and legend says they were made by the hoof prints of a horse whose owner asked him to either win the horse race he was engaging in (on the Sabbath, no less) or take him straight to hell - the horse obviously chose the latter by immediately barreling into a tree, killing his sacrilegious rider. You will read of deserted ships that mysteriously came to shore through the treacherous waters of the North Carolina Outer Banks, strange and unexplained disappearances of several individuals, the legend I must assume all new students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill continue to be told about (I was, but that was back in 1988) related to the present site of Gimghoul Castle, a couple of botanical mysteries, several stories related to animals, and a number of others miscellaneous tales.

I must admit that I was unfamiliar with several of these stories, although many were well known to me. One of the most interesting tales involves the identity of a schoolmaster of Rowan County; there is plenty of evidence that this man, Peter Stuart Ney, was in fact Marshal Ney of France, one of Napoleon's most trusted military strategists. Marshal Ney was, history tells us, executed by a firing squad after Napoleon's downfall, but rumors abound that his execution was in fact a hoax.

While the caliber of the twenty mysteries chronicled here varies somewhat, only a couple of them failed to fascinate me. Naturally, those with no association with North Carolina won't feel the connection I feel to the material, but anyone interested in the legends and mysteries of former times should find much to interest them in this engaging collection of Tarheel mysteries.

This is fantastic book. It is filled with history as well as practical and useful information for recreating the food of the past today, while retaining the spirit of how food tasted in Jefferson's day at Monticello. The photographs are intriguing. I only wish the mentioned campanion book by the late Karen Hess would soon, somehow, be available.

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

Frederickson furnishes the historical background necessary to understand the political history of the South--and the nation--for the past half century. The Dixiecrats, who bolted the Democratic Party in 1948 out of their opposition to the notion of racial equality, only won four states in their effort to elect Strom Thurmond. But their reactionary stance would eventually reach a wider public frightened by the integration of public schools, fair housing laws, and federal protection of citizenship rights. The campaign marks the beginning of the white South's flight from the New Deal coalition. Like Strom Thurmond himself, a lightning rod figure in this excellent book, the heirs of these segregationist rebels become Republicans in 1964 and 1968, and bring about the two-party South. The future of the region was foretold in the white supremacist revolt of 1948, and is retold here with clarity, grace, balance, and style. A fine piece of historical research and writing that illuminate American politics today.

Kari Frederickson's analysis of the Dixiecrat movement and their influence on Southern (and American) politics is an important volume, and will likely be the definitive work on the subject. The author charts the course of southern dissatisfaction with the national Democratic Party beginning in the 1930s, culminating in the "critical election" of 1948 when the Dixiecrats challenged President Truman.

What differs in this volume is the detail given to the Dixiecrat Party and J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright, the party's candidates for president and vice-president, respecitively. As a result, we not only gain a better understanding of the Dixiecrats and why the party won the votes of only four southern states, but also how this pivotal event was the beginning of the end for the one-party South. Recommended for those interested in American political history and a must read for historians and students of the American South.