North Carolina Books

I own this book and have it for sale. But I noticed that no one had rated it and people looking for books on N.C. might not know what is in this to make a judgement about whether they want to buy it or not.

So here's what's in this book: Lots of DETAIL....photographs of people, places and art from past and present. Photographs of Wade Martin, a cool old photo of the inside pool of the Biltmore House, completely done in tile with no windows....Photos of wood statues/carvings from the area, lots of hooked rug and pottery history and photos. Packed with historical accounts as related by the elderly of what life was like in the 30s, that everyone worked,and what they did and how they did it. An interesting photo of an "automobile train" - 15 wagons hooked together and pulled by a Packard truck to haul rock off the mountain.

Detailed family histories, family tree of Harriet Elizabeth Alexander and the Mace Family, photos of tombstones, cemeteries and churches. Photos and descriptions of chairs and chair making: corn shuck woven maple ladderback,two-back wagon seat,detailed photos of workmanship. Photos of brochures of household implements indigenous to the area in the 1930s. Handweaving of Allie Josephine Mast, woven coverlets, Shook House, Mast House and inhabitants' histories and photos. History and photos of old sawmills. This book makes me want to visit Western N.C.

If you are visiting Western North Carolina and wouldlike to understand what history you are seeing, buy this book....

Meeting The Professor: Growing Up In The William Blackburn Family is the autobiography of novelist, essayist, editor, and academician Alexander Blackburn (Professor Emeritus of English, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs). Meeting The Professor provides a kind of dual portrait of Alexander and his father William Blackburn (a legendary crative-writing professor at Duke University and mentor to such authors as Reynolds Price, William Styron, Anne Tyler, and Fred Chappell). Born in Iran to mission parents, William Blackburn became a Rhodes scholar at xford and earned a Ph.D. from Yale. He was a brooding, taciturn and ultimately unknowable man who died blind and speecless at age 73, with one of his most beloved students, Reynolds Price, staying at the bedside night after night playing Mozart for him. Alexader Blackburn would follow the literary life, becoming a teacher of writing like his illustrtous father, as well as maturing into a novelist. Meeting The Professor is enhanced with 40 black/white photographs and is a compellingly written and inherently fascinating memoir.

What a heart warming story of such a interesting lady whom led what appears to be a very fullfilling life. I enjoed it tremendously.

I was amazed at the life of Mr. Timblake. If you wished to get insight into the Pre Revolution Era life, then Read this Book.

Reading Memories of the Islands was a joy. The writer writes from the heart and paints a picture so vivid; it is as if you are there. It's fast, easy to follow and you won't want to put it down, as you're immediately drawn into the story of this young man and his family growing up in the most modest of means in eastern North Carolina. You'll learn what it is like to survive the Great Depression making due with whatever the family could produce. Experience the joy of getting electricity and giving up the washboard for a washing machine. This is a must read! [[ASIN:1434305864 Memories Of The Islands: The Life, Place, and Times of the Barber Family]

I don't even like primary accounts of battles and wars very much, yet I still loved this book. It tells of the doughboys' journey in World War I, from beginning to end. The author integrates the state history into the entire war, making it not just a boring book about North Carolina's participation. The integration makes it tell about North Carolina's participation, but not so much as to cause the book to be dull and unclear about what else was going on. Rather he tells it first from the national point-of-view and goes into detail about what role North Carolina had to play in the events. This a good book whether you are a World War I buff or just interested in World War I history.

A. ENGLER ANDERSON, comments:

Most treatments of Jewish mysticism lean toward the ideologically critical (Graetz), the romantic (Buber), the touchy-feely (Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Breslov) or movement propaganda (Lubavitch). The academic attempts at categorizing and describing Jewish mystical movements (chiefly Scholem) also fall short of comprehensiveness because they tend to focus largely on doctrine and theology, and ignore handmaiden disciplines of history, sociology and economics.

It is precisely this gap that Sharot fills with his _Messianism, Mysticism and Magic_. Coming as part of a longer line of Jewish scholars who have attempted to apply the mindset of other disciplines to Jewish studies, the book is not as much an original contribution to knowledge, but is more of a significant re-ordering of hitherto existing knowledge in the field.

Sharot's contribution is, to my mind, much in the vein of Bentzion Dinur, whose _Bmifneh Hadorot_ (Hebrew) brought the ideas of economics, sociology (with a slightly Marxist analysis) to the way we understood the origins of Hasidism.

What is compelling is that Sharot's is a treatment that spans centuries of Jewish history. He clearly expands on Scholem's exposition of Jewish mystical theology, done decades earlier, but puts the Jewish mystical movements in a perspective that avoids mono-causal errors, and allows a more intelligent, more diverse understanding of the Jewish mystical movement of history.

This is important for the scholar as well as the Jewish layperson who is confronted in the 1990s with the resurrection, in various forms, of kabbalah centers, in-your-face Hasidic movements claiming the mantle of authenticity, and the repackaging of Jewish mysticism the contemporary, feminist-friendly form of "Jewish Renewal." There is, moreover, hardly a major Jewish religious movement that has not reached into the attic of Jewish history to come up with mystical themes they can use to get Jews back into their synagogues, or somehow affiliate and become dues-paying members. And then there are the charlatans, in California and elsewhere, who offer kabbalism seminars for high fees, which attract their share of high profile (and religiously illiterate) stars and starlets -- all making headlines and enhancing the promoters' revenue streams.

I grew up in Mexico and I grew up reading this book. To revist its light prose, delicately drawn village and carefully delineated shadows was an incredible pleasure. I'm so glad I have this copy in my possesion, I've missed it.
I wish I knew more about Josephina Nigli, though.

This is a great novel. The action is continuous throughout the book. It kept me wanting to turn each page. I felt as if this story was always outguessing me as to what would happen next. I love trying to analyze. I found no fault in the author's makeup of this novel. There was no weakness in any of the characters. In my opinion, Sam Conyers, the Australian, has a lot of originality. How he was able to cope with Pete Logan's mentality is beyond me. I would have given up. One could make a very good production in movie form from this book.

Lowell Presnell excavates a wealth of information in this historical narrative. The reader is taken back in history to learn of the ancient and historical nature of Western North Carolina and surrounding areas of natural wealth.A must reading for those who are interested in the searching out gems and minerals of this State.