North Carolina Books

This is a wonderful book! I enjoyed Jo Northrup's column in Country Living for years. In this book, she brings the same charm she brought to her column. I especially like to read this book on nights when I can't sleep. It's low stress!

I am a fourth grade teacher in North Carolina. This past year, I read Cowpath Days to my class and incorporated it into my curriculum. My students and I found it intriguing and informative. It gave my students a better understanding of what their grandparents may have done for fun, and how life was different then. I recommend this book to kids of all ages, or anyone who wants to remember those Cowpath Days.

This book tells the story of Dalton, Georgia, and how the textile mill led to its development. It is a very detailed look at the townspeople and their struggles throughout a century. It provides a unique and perceptive view of the South's economic and social transformation beginning during the aftermath of the Civil War and continuing with the rise of technology into the Reagan years.

For the size of the book, it is a fantastic reference. Although it represents North Carolina fossils, it does well for other areas too. I collect in New Jersey and the specimens I find there are also noted in this guide. I highly recommend it.

You NEED this CD set.... it will change your life!! Because of the trainings on this CD set I am 100% debt free, after having over 6-figures in debt!!!

I wanted to know what it was really like during WW2, sure I've heard all the ridiculous stories of one man saving an entire company. This is a real book with solid content. The book reveals a believable account of what happened with the men and women of that era and the relationships that were developed, while protecting our freedom. Now I understand what my Grandfather and his friends went through and I can relate the stories of this book to his own stories. A big plus+ the glossary at the end of each chapter helps explain WW2 terminalogy without running to the back of the book or pulling out a magnifying glass to read the booknotes. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know what was really going on with our military.

Dr. Sullivan presents a fascinating account of an important--but often overlooked--era in the American Civil Rights movement. Days of Hope is an authoritative account of the roots of the civil rights struggle. The book is interesting, comprehensive, and impeccably sourced and researched. A must for any student of the movement.

These are tough poems by a writer whose sense of beauty and grief is as sharp as grassblades and as rich as colostrum.

Dead and Gone is another fine example of Manly Wade Wellman's ability to breathe life into stories from the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding communities. This collection of 10 famous murders from 1808 to 1914 reveals a time when women were idealized and men of the community mobilized rapidly to hunt down a suspected murderer or escaped prisoner. The collection covers a variety of crimes from murder for revenge to poisoning for profit. Mr. Wellman's gift for clear and finely crafted language help the reader envision the times and places he writes about. Included is the story of the murder committed by Frances Silver; Sharon McCrumb expanded on this tale in her novel The Ballad of Frankie Silver. I wish more of Mr. Wellman's books were available; so many are out of print and difficult to find. Wouldn't it be wonderful to help a new generation of readers discover the fine writing of his genius through reissues!

This important book examines the medical and biological roots of Nazi Germany's campaign to rid itself of those deemed to be a threat to its biological health. Consisting of seven essays and 270 illustrations--photographs, images from Nazi publications, and historical artifacts--it describes how the Nazi regime enacted "racial hygiene" programs designed to purge German society of those it considered physically, mentally, and racially unfit.

The first four essays are by Sheila Faith Weiss ("German Eugenics, 1890-1933"), Daniel Kevles ("International Eugenics"), Gisela Bock ("Nazi Sterilization"), and Benoit Massin ("The 'Science of Race'").

The fifth essay--"Nazi 'Euthanasia' Programs" by Michael Burleigh'--describes the secret campaign Hitler launched in 1939 to rid Germany of those it declared mentally and physically unfit ("life unworthy of life"). The campaign began with the use of sedative overdoses, morphine injections, and starvation to kill children in hospitals. The "euthanasia" program then expanded to include adults who were gassed in specially built chambers at six killing centers inside the Third Reich--Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, and Sonnenstein in Germany and Hartheim in Austria.

In the sixth essay--"From 'Euthanasia' to the 'Final Solution'"--Henry Friedlander writes about how the Nazi murder of Germans judged physically and mentally unfit paved the way for the extermination of Jews in Poland. When Hitler ended the official phase of the euthanasia program in 1941 (the killings continued unofficially), much of the program's personnel and equipment were sent to Poland to set up and operate the Operation Reinhard death camps--Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.

Many historians consider the mass killings of Jews in the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion as the beginning of the Final Solution, but Friedlander argues that the killing of Jewish disabled patients in Germany and German-occupied Poland in 1940 just because they were Jews was an even earlier starting point.

The book concludes with "Reflections of a German Scientist" by Benno Müller-Hill, who describes the "contagious mix of science with ideology that was so very destructive" during the Nazi era. He writes that after the war there was virtually total silence about what science and, more specifically, genetics had wrought under the Nazis. When Karl Saller's critical book about anthropology during the Nazi period was published in 1961, his German colleagues shunned him. The silence in German scientific circles continued until 1980. "Today, when most of the perpetrators are dead," writes Müller-Hill, "the history of eugenics under the Nazis can finally be written."

This book, written in conjunction with the current exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, shows how German doctors, scientists, public health officials, and academic experts entrusted with the responsibility of enhancing and protecting life came instead to be agents of persecution and death.

--review by Dr. Charles Patterson, author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust