North Carolina Books

The German Colonial Empire was a short lived phenomenon but one that played an important role in the domestic poltics of the German Reich prior to WWI. Smith shows the interplay of domestic politics and colonial policy. The development of two modes of thought about the colonies in Germany- settlement colonialism and economic colonialsim are presented as compteting ideas. He is also excellent at showing the evolutionary nature of the German colonial adminstration and how it responded to major challenges (like the Maji Maji revolt). On the whole Smith emphasizes that the German Empire was a work in progress and one that was not (Allied propoganda efforts aside) dramatically different than those of the French and English. In particular, it was, in some was reforming itself at a faster rate than older colonial powers like the English from whihc the German initially borrowed many of their adminsitarive techniques. None of this should imply that Smith glosses over the very real abuses of the German colonial adminsitration (particularly in its earliest phases when colonial compnaies control the colonies). The book is a fascinating read and well written. It is a must for any student of the German Empire before WWI.

The book also informs on Smith's later work The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism.

Lorena Eaker has outdone herself this time. This book provides an incredible gold mine of information about German settlers in early North Carolina and is well researched. Documentation of research is much more reliable than average books of this genre. I eagerly await the upcoming supplement.

Letters from German immigrants who fought in the American Civil War, estimated at 200,000, are rare, so this book is a welcome addition to Civil War literature and shows that Germans were not a monolithic group but held various political, religious and other views. It also gives battle descriptions and descriptions of the hardships of being a Civil War soldier. Germans' pride and prejudices are clearly revealed. A terrific and much needed volume on a much neglectected group in the nation's greatest conflict.

Gray's book does a masterful job of elucidating a key part of the Cold War. In looking at the Cold War in Europe, historians, both academic and popular/armchair, often overlook what America's allies were doing as they fought their own fronts in the larger Cold War. While NATO allies like Britain, Germany, and Italy were loyal supporters of the U.S., and they played a role in Washington's strategy, they also had their own agendas. Nowhere was this more important than in West Germany.

Unlike other American allies in Europe, West Germany had its own "personal" Cold War to fight (against East Germany). In doing so, however, its decisions could impact the larger global conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Additionally, West Germany was locked in a struggle with its own countrymen, in a sense. The "enemy" were fellow Germans.

Using a tremendous array of archival evidence, Gray demonstrates the origins, nuance, and development of West Germany's own Cold War strategy. His bibliography is very impressive. At one point, Amazon recommended buying this book together with Mary Sarotte's "Dealing with the Devil," also about Germany during the Cold War. The two books complement each other nicely, and the comparison is made even more intriguing by the fact that Sarotte and Gray both studied German history at Yale University, only a few years apart.

This book is necessary reading for the graduate student or scholar of the Cold War, and it is an excellent choice for the casual reader looking to go beyond the History Channel.

Don Carlo Gesualdo (1560 - 1613) was rich, artistic, and - as the second son of a noble Neapolitan family - free to indulge his passion for music. But disaster struck: his brother died, and it was decreed that he must carry on the line. The bride found for him - Donna Maria d'Avalos - was his cousin, and the greatest beauty in town. Older and more experienced, she had already sent two husbands to their graves -one of them according to rumor, from "an excess of connubial bliss". Don Carlo, (who may have been gay) fathered a son, whereupon he his interest wandered elsewhere to music and to hunting. One day his uncle divulged to him that his attention starved wife was enjoying a brazen affair with the handsome Duke of Andria, and that whenever possible they would "invite each other to battle on the fields of love". Alerted to the fact that Don Carlo knew about the affair, the Duke tried to persuade Donna Maria to end the affair, but she proclaimed she would sooner die. Thus was the scene set for Don Carlo's historic act.

One day in October of 1590 Don Carlo surreptitiously disabled his locks, then accounced that he would set out on a hunt only to creep back in the still of night with his henchmen. The chronicles go into salacious detail about what happened next: About the night-dress Donna Maria asked to be put out on the bed, about the maid posted as sentinel, and the sudden commotion as Don Carlo and his men broke down the doors to find the pair "in flagrante delicto di fragrante peccato", exhausted and asleep after their love-making. There were shots and multiple sword-thrusts, with Don Carlo unable convince himself the job was done until he had cut his victims to ribbons, and had personally skewered his wife to the floor, repeating to himself "I do not believe she is dead". He dragged the bodies out onto the stairs, along with a notice explaining why he'd killed them, for all the town came to gape at next morning. The Duke was still clad in a woman's night-dress, while his lover's "wounds were all in her belly, and especially in those parts which ought to be kept honest".

Neapolitans were riveted, with as many taking the lovers' side as that of their murderer. All the local poets were spurred into song, including the great Torquato Tasso, whose friendship with the protagonists inspried his tear-drenched sonnet "On the Death of Two Most Noble Lovers". Don Carlo's nobility ensured there was no trial, and he quietly withdrew to Ferrara, where he remarried, but only to find himself "assailed and afflicted by a vast horde of demons which gave him no peace unless twelve young men, whom he kept specially for the purpose, were to beat him violently three times a day, during which operation he was wont to smile joyfully."

Don Carlo built a private chapel, completed in 1592. Inside hung a painting depicting the Virgin Mary and saints all pointing to the sinner, Don Carlo, while the fires of purgatory burnt below - out of which angels pull the figures of a man and a woman. Could these be the murdered lovers before which Don Carlo implored forgiveness? His music certainly becomes filled with an obession with themes of guilt, sin, pity, and death - even the joy of love being mixed with a fascination with pain: 'dolorosa gioia', such 'joyous pain' being a typical outburst.

Never has there been a composer with a more macabre background than this, nor yet so muscially so obsessionally fascinating.

Stravinsky began his famous foreword to Glenn Watkins' biography of Gesualdo with the words "musicians may yet save Gesualdo from musicologist, but certainly the latter have had the best of it until now". Watkins makes a wonderful companion through the vertigo inducing chromatic spirals leading into the strange, visionary world of this dark genius. The entire book makes gripping reading not merely for the dark details of his biography but for the profound insights into late Renaissance to early Baroque period in which he dwelled.

So truth indeed is stranger than fiction.

Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination is an eloquent tour de force that argues for the contemporary engagement and revitalization of the Islamic tradition through the reconciliatory hermeneutical strategy of al-Ghazali. Professor Moosa's extensive training in traditional Islamic scholarship as well as his fluency in the Western intellectual tradition allows him to address many challenges currently confronting the intellectual and spiritual interpretation of Islam with an original and powerful voice. As such, Ghazali is a quest for an emancipatory knowledge that is equally weighted by both esoteric and exoteric epistemologies. Highlighting al-Ghazali's liminal discursivity, Professor Moosa skillfully argues for a Muslim subjectivity that allows for multiple perspectives in order to embrace new paradigms that are simultaneously loyal to tradition and temporally appropriate. Far from apologetic, Ghazali is a dynamic and creative attempt to critically engage traditional Islam in the contemporary language of the Western academy. Although Moosa often offers provocations aimed at the entrenched forms of the tradition, he never loses sight of either its ethical imperative or its revelatory authenticity. In this sense Ghazali is far more than a rhetorical analysis; it is a continuation of the intellectual tradition of al-Ghazali and an interpretation of his rhetorical strategy of Islamic revitalization in the Technical Age.

Ghosts and Legends of the Carolina Coasts, Terrance Zepke's latest in her best-selling series of ghost tales books, is, if possible, her best yet. She's evidently been poking around in some spooky places, because she's stirred-up more lively ghosts for us to love, pity, fear and, yes -always- chill to, in these twenty-eight tales and legends from her beloved North and South Carolina shores.

Included throughout the book, and almost rivaling the actual tales, are bountiful historical facts; explicit directions (and the occasional warning) for visiting the ghost sites and museums; numerous websites to send us off on our own myriad ghost-searches; and intriguing, atmospheric illustrations setting the stage for each haunting tale. In other words, there is something fascinating for everyone, whether you are a ghost tale buff, travel enthusiast, or just curious to find out what this popular "ghost-craze" is all about. You'll be hooked, I guarantee it!

All I can say is that this sequel was everything I could have hoped for; readers of Angel Doll will embrace this book as well.

Cy & Jeannie Martin give you a crash course in the history and practice of gold mining in the western U.S. (including Alaska), Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Sections of the book include: Chronology of Gold in America; How to Pan for Gold; Tales of Gold Rushes; Directory of Old Mining Camps; Glossary; and a Selected Bibliography. Numerous B& W photos and drawings are included. 160 pages.

I really enjoy this series and found Gone to Glory to be a great addition to it. The characters were warm and believable, and the story took some unexpected twists. Although the plot deals with things like con men, financial fraud and murder, another part of the story deals with the undercover investigator's gradual change. The ending was very satisfying. I highly recommend Gone to Glory.