North Carolina Books

i got this book for a legal history research paper on the free exercise clause. it was easy to read, interesting, and well cited. i highly reccomend it.

This book is an excellent, concise account of Kennedy's policies toward Latin America. Rabe does an exceptional job in presenting the information in a fairhanded manner. The writing is superb and the book is an easy read. It is a must have for those interested in Kennedy, Latin America, or just history in general.

Mountain Born, Mountain Molded by Larry G. Morgan is a wryly written personal memoir of growing up in the Nantahala region of western North Carolina from 1945-1955 as the fifth in a family of ten children. Childhood memories, simple games kids played long before popular culture became overloaded with atrociously [spendy] collectible toys, and the refreshing wonder of the great outdoors are all recalled in this memorable, nostalgic, and highly recommended narrative.

This book is excellent if you are tired of the hussle and bussle of the city and looking for a GREAT weekend trip to the mountains. The maps are a little hard to see but the write-ups for all of the Inns are tremendous. Also included is what to do around the town with restuarants included.

John C. Inscoe is probably one of the most prolific scholars on Southern Appalachian History; Mountain Masters is in many ways the work that firmly planted him in the historiographic tradition of Western North Carolina. Mountain Masters relies on many primary sources (not just a wide variety of them, but a thorough use of them as well) to portray what slavery was really like in Western North Carolina through the Civil War. In opposition to many popular notions, in which slavery didn't exist or was marginal in Western North Carolina, John Inscoe revealed that Western North Carolina was not very different from the rest of the south in trading, selling, buying, and working slaves. Though the patterns of slavery were different in many cases, the institution was still very strong in the region and had a profound impact on the politics, society, and cultural values of the people of the mountains. This book ought to be read by every North Carolina scholar, every slavery scholar, and certainly by every scholar who studies the Southern Appalachians. It is beautifully written and engaging.

This is a book you can hear...the interviews with people who live in western North Carolina are so well done that as you read you can hear the people speaking. This book covers many topics from farming to history. A good cross section of people gives the reader the opportunity to read different opinions on the varied topics. The book is filled with excellent photograhs. Especially interesting are photographs of most of the people interviewed in the book. Putting faces with the 'voices' is a real treat! The reader gets a good overview of the history of the area and insights into often ignored aspects of the culture of this georgous part of the US. This book is a good research tool for anyone learning about the area and it is entertaining reading as well. I love it!

Mr. Adams remarkable book exposes H. Kaiser as a sociopath, war profiteer, and con-man. Reading his treatment of workers at Boulder Dam in the early 1930s where 110 people died, cases of carbon monixide poisoning and heat exhaustion written off as 'non-industrial' by (guess who)Sidney Garfield, the project's medical director. kaiser lost 100 claims by workers, settled out of court, that shook kaiser awake that he is not above decency and morality, that the 'rules' actually applied to him in the only way he could understand: monetarily. Out of this sordid, disgusting begining came Kaiser 'Permanente', and its step-child managed care.

This is the second volume of a projected two-volume history of labor relations in Major League Baseball (MLB). It deals with the period since 1921 and focuses on the integration of the game beginning in 1947, the labor disputes of MLB in the 1960s and 1970s when a rejuvenated Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) under Marvin Miller won a series of bitter contests with the owners that eventually led to "free agency." During this period profound changes took place in labor relations in MLB. Mining records of MLB at Cooperstown and at other repositories, Burk fashions an interesting and useful narrative of the evolution of labor relations. He divides his book into two major parts; the first is what he appropriately calls the "paternalistic era" between 1921 and the early 1970s and the second is an "inflationary era" in the post-free agency period since that time.

Although he discusses earlier management/labor issues, the centerpiece of this book is its discussion of the transformation of the Major League Players Association from a moribund organization into an efficient and exceptionally effective union in the 1960s when Marvin Miller assumed the position of executive director. Perhaps no union leader has been more effective than Marvin Miller in changing the nature of owner/employee relations. When he took over the MLPBA in the middle part of the 1960s Miller brought a wealth of experience in union organizing to a completely new arena. The moribund organization he took over had been a defacto arm of MLB and had succeeded in aiding in the preservation of the status quo in the game that has reigned since the first part of the twentieth century.

Miller immediately began to change that relationship. He worked with the players to achieve a succession of small victories ranging from the raising of minimum annual salary to modest changes in such thing as meal money to salary arbitration and finally free agency. The ending of the longstanding "reserve clause" in MLB was the MLBPA's penultimate achievement. This "reserve clause" had been established in the nineteenth century by MLB and stated that the club had the right to renew a player's contract following each season even without the player's authorization--effectively making the player's contract the property of the team that first acquired him for the rest of the player's career. While the contract and hence the player could be traded, a player could not unilaterally choose to play for another team even if he did not have a current signed contract.

Robert Burk follows the efforts of a succession of players, as well as Miller, who challenged the "reserve clause." He includes an important discussion of Curt Flood, an all-star center fielder traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969 who refused to accept this trade and filed a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court advocating for his right to tender his services to other teams. He lost that case, but the dam had cracked and within a few years, with the Messersmith decision, free agency became the norm for MLB. It fundamentally changed the nature of MLB and its economics. Because of Marvin Miller's enormous influence on MLB I believe he deserves to be inducted into MLB's "Hall of Fame," but it is a real stretch to see that ever happening because of the hatred he evoked from the owners. And, by the way, Curt Flood vdeserves induction too.

This is a fascinating, detailed, and scholarly analysis of how the business of baseball has evolved in the twentieth century. It is well-researched and reasoned, and relatively well written for most scholarly history but certainly not a breezy reading experience. It is a companion volume to Burk's earlier book, "Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920" (University of North Carolina Press, 1994), which should be read before "Much More than a Game" to provide background to this study. Burk's work is representative of the growing number of serious historical works on MLB. I wish there were more of them.

This book is a collection of 1850's love letters from one of North Carolina's favorite sons to his future wife. Zebulon Vance of Asheville, then a frontier law student at UNC, carried on this correspondence with his sweetheart, the socially prominent Miss Harriett Espy of Morganton, during the three years that it took him to get his law degree and improve his prospects so that her guardian would consent to the marriage. The letters offer a charming portrait of two young people: one a poor, but ambitious young lawyer from the frontier and the other the prim orphaned daughter of a Presbyterian minister, raised by the gentry. In their letters Zeb and Harriett parry, quarrel, and play social games as their relationship deepens into trust and finally love. The personalities shine through the pages of this book, showing Zeb as a rough diamond determined to be accepted by the social and political aristocracy of his day, and Harriett as a pious and sheltered gentlewoman swept off her feet by the whirlwind of charm and determination that was Zeb Vance. These courtship letters, found in an old trunk many years after their deaths, were compiled and edited by Elizabeth Roberts Cannon for the Press of UNC-Chapel Hill in 1971. Zeb Vance went on to marry Harriett Espy. Nine years later he became North Carolina's governor during the Civil War, and afterwards was elected to the U.S. Senate. Zeb Vance was beloved not just by Harriett but by all of North Carolina-- and finally by me. I found this book when I was researching "Ghost Riders," my novel about the Civil War in the mountains, in which Zeb Vance is a main character. I spent several years getting to know Zebulon Vance, through primary source material, biographies, and through his own writings which range from his earliest school boy letters to his speeches in the 1890's Senate. Zebulon Vance's charm is undiminished by the passing years. I felt his impatience at being the outsider in his early days, the warmth of his wit, and the force of his wrath when he felt that the mountain people were being mistreated by the Confederate government. He was an irresistible combination of Will Rogers and Winston Churchill, and I was sorry when I finished writing my book. I miss him.

This book opened my eyes about life in general. People need to respect their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Our memories are wonderful stories about the good times of our youth and we think at the time is the bad times. This author has a wonderful way of expressing his feelings and, at times, mine. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is searching for a little bit of their country upbringing, or who wished they had a country one to remember.