North Carolina Books

This is a most worthy men-at-arms series; like the book's description says, it shows the much more colorful side to the uniforms of the Confederate Army. One man depicted in the color plates for Volume One that I found particularly interesting was a soldier in the Union Light Infantry, a SC unit based on the British Black Watch (42nd Royal Highlanders).
The plates are pretty much the highlight of this series, and show realistic looking soldiers surrounded by beautiful women and scenery, and baring all their various weapons. The text, nonetheless, reveals numerous interesting details. This is an excellent source on the uniforms and appearances of the soldiers of the Confederacy.

Osprey Publishing has issued Volume 5 of their popular book, The Confederate Army 1861-65. A part of their sprawling Men-at-Arms series (this is book #441 in that series), this one covers the uniforms and arms of troops from Tennessee and North Carolina. Written by Ron Field and lavishly illustrated with Richard Hook's watercolors, this book is a worthy addition to the Osprey family. Retailing for $15.95 here in the USA ($21 in Canada), the book has 48 pages, nearly all of them with period photographs or full color drawings.

The new book focuses on each state's antebellum militia and the hastily organized volunteer regiments that were pressed into Confederate service in the initial stages of the war. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, letters, state and local records, and early photographs, Ron Field presents an extensive array of early war military units, their uniforms and accoutrements, drawing heavily upon primary descriptions. He also takes a cursory, but interesting look at how the transition occurred from locally supplied clothing and equipment (which often varied widely from company to company) to state-issued regulation Confederate uniforms, particularly in North Carolina, where, by the end of the war, the term "ragged Rebel" would be made obsolete from the vast stores of supplies held by the state.



Field starts with Tennessee, looking at the outfitting of the militia and early volunteers in 1861, and examines the role various ladies aid societies played in clothing the soldiers of the Volunteer State. He then discusses the role of the state's Military and Financial Board in taking over the administration and logistics of supplying the troops. Field then shifts his focus to North Carolina, again discussing and characterizing the antebellum militia and contrasting them to how the state later took charge and made its forces appear more uniform in appearance. He also briefly compares winter clothing to summer issue for troops from both states.



The book includes a select bibliography for readers wanting to dive a little deeper into the outfitting of Confederate troops from Tennessee and North Carolina. The index is comprehensive, as is the discussion that accompanies the Richard Hook's illustrations. All in all, The Confederate Army 1861-85 (5) Tennessee and North Carolina (ISBN: 9781846031878) maintains the tradition of excellence we have come to expect from Osprey, and is well worth the modest investment.

A very informative book on a era in which either you weren't alive at the time, too young, or couldn't believe that you went through all of what happened during the 1960's to early 1970's.

Nothing inspires so much enduring controversy and strongly held opinions as the subject of active draft resistance during the Vietnam War. The draft resisters were composed of a relatively small segment of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of young American men of draft age who avoided serving in the Army in one fashion or another. While most avoided active service in one or another fashion by enrolling in colleges or graduate schools, getting married and quickly having children, or by crossing the border into Canada, the draft resisters stood their ground and actively (and often quite dramatically) confronted the system by openly opposing the draft, burning their draft cards publicly, and serving themselves up for the legal and social consequences of refusing to serve in the military.

The author's approach is both appealing and effective; he uses a plethora of anecdotes and then places them in context by providing an overall history of the movement as well as an effective analysis of the effect of the movement both for the individuals choosing to participate in it as well as for the society at large. Author Michael Foley is a history professor at the City University of New York College of Staten Island, and he obviously has some personal experience informing his awareness of the phenomenon, which was in his estimation one of the most important and most progressively attempted efforts at defanging the war machine, a technique which comprising the cutting edge of young Americans opposition to the war in Southeast Asia. It found its inspiration in the Gandhi-like examples of the civil rights movement, and found widespread philosophical and legal support for a method that eventually forced the formal apparatus of government to sit up and take notice.

What I found especially fascinating about Foley's approach is his concentration on events transpiring in the greater Boston area, where I had many personal experiences, both with the active resistance against the war as well as the other related anti-war activities. So the author's cogent analysis and colorful anecdotes often churn up memories of people and the times from my own reservoir of such experiences some thirty-five years ago. What was so intriguing about the movement was the way it transformed what was initially a massive loathing for what was considered an unmanly and suspect strategy into one that was much more widely supported and endorsed by mainstream Americans. Thus, by placing themselves and their futures on the line (many resisters eventually served time in prison rather than serve in the military), the resisters did change public opinion and popular perception of the war itself and on the ways in which honorable young men could behave in response to it.

Eventually, such efforts actually helped to end the draft, as President Nixon foisted a lottery system as an interim approach to the patently unfair policies of the draft, and soon thereafter created an all-volunteer service in response to the public outcry over 'selective service'. The actions of the war resisters sparked a wide-spread recognition among their peers of the obviously unfair nature of the draft itself, and helped to legitimize the mass-protests against the war involving millions of Americans outraged by the racist and social class distinctions made in draft policies. Finally, Foley shows how greater civic awareness is required to ensure a more enlightened and informed understanding of one's patriotic duties to the country during time of war. Enjoy!

In "Containing Arab Nationalism," Salim Yaqub provides a remarkably in-depth look at U.S. policy in the Middle East during the mid to late 1950s and how it changed in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. The main theme explored here deals with the increased level of U.S. influence in the context of the Cold War and how the U.S. reacted to Britain's changing role in the region. The narrative that Yaqub presents shows that the U.S. could not have been more serious about keeping Soviet influence out of the Middle East, but that the Eisenhower administration wasn't always confident in the methods employed to achieve this goal. In the end, the administration adapted its policies in such a way that the Soviets never gained the type of stronghold in the region that the U.S. feared, but Yaqub demonstrates that this was by no means an easy task.

The time period covered in the book is short, but Yaqub explores the crucial years of 1956-1960 with remarkable depth. The major events of these years, such as the interventions in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Iraqi revolution are all delicately woven into the overall narrative of how the Cold War affected Western policy towards the region. Yaqub's writing style is superb, and the book is extensively researched. This book should be at the top of the list of students and scholars alike that wish to achieve a greater understanding of recent Middle Eastern history and how those countries interacted with the United States.

In this important work the Eisenhower doctrin of containment in the middle east is finally given a full length book and its place in cold war history is finally made. Eisenhower had a number of Middle Eastern hands around him and like Presidents before and after he cemented his middle east policy on one pillar: Sunni conservatism, which at the time meant Nuri-Al Said, King Hussien, the house of Saud and the Shah of Iran(not a sunni, a nominal shia Persian nationalist). The creation of Nasserism in the early 1950s led Eisenhower to reposition America in the middle East. Before the 1956 Suez crises the United States took a back seat in the Middle East. Nevertheless the idea of the Baghdad pact, a confederation opposing communist ifniltration of the region was essential to U.S policy. Already the U.S had supported Turkey and Greece against Communism and when it seemed that Nasser would accept Khrushchev money to build the Aswan High Dam, Ike saw the danger. After the neo-imperialism of the English and French invasion of Egypt in 1956, Eisenhower took the plunge. He cemented the policy by trying to ally with conservative regimes, not neccesarily democratic but what he and his CIA director Dulles and Kirmet Roosevelt saw as the lesser of two evils.

When Lebanon was threatened in 1958 U.S troops went ashore. When Jordan was threatened the UK sent paratroops. Syria was cemented for a short period. A revolution against the Shah was thwarted. Iraq was kept firmly in the orbit of the west. Saudi had no where to turn as Nasser invaded Yemen and bombed Saudi so that Saudi had to fund the royalists fighting in Yemen. In addition the U.S had to check nasserism in Libya and Algeria.

This was not a simple game. What one may notice is that Israel was not part and partial to this policy. Eisenhower advisors saw Israel as a leftist upstart, upsetting the Sunni elites they loved and not helpful against Communism. It wasn't until JFK that ISrael became a U.S ally. This will shock those who beleive the U.S created Israel and that Israel was an 'offshore military base' from the get go.

A wonderful contirbution.

Seth J. Frantzman

I truly could not put this book down. My daughter gave this book to me for my birthday last fall. When I looked at the title, I was alittle skeptical. As soon as I started reading the book I was completely absorbed. If you want to know about Southern cooking or the Southern people this book is for you. What a fun book.

Cornbread Nation 1 was edited by John Edgerton and includes fifty-one original features and selections previously published in magazines and journals, all celebrating Southern people, places, traditions, and foods. It was published in association with Southern Foodways Alliance, a group of foodies who "celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the diverse food cultures of the American South."

There are now four collections of essays thus the "1" in the title-- the "annual" has appeared four times over six years. The other collections are Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue, Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South, and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

This volume is organized by "People," "Times," "Things" and "Places", but it's much more fun to pick and choose your dishes much as you would at a buffet in Northern Virginia -- nothing prevents you from having dessert before the soup, for example.

As Edgerton writes: "Individually, the selections in these pages can stand alone; they need no shoring up from us. Collectively, they buttress our conviction that nothing else the South has to offer to the nation and the world--with the possible exception of its music--is more eternally satisfying, heartwarming, reconciling, and memorable than its food. Our dishes and beverages express our faith, our good humor, our binding ties, our eternal joys and sorrows, our readiness for whatever awaits us."

A few of my favorites: Rick Bragg's "Dinner Rites," Thanksgiving meal in Alabama with cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese ("a vegetable in the South.") "I eat until it hurts, and my brother Sam will grin at me, because he lives here, works at the cotton mill, and can eat it all the time."

Fred Chappell on "ice" tea: "I am one southerner who detests that dirty water the color of oak-leaf tannin."

Kathleen Purvis teaches that pig liver, head parts, and cornmeal spiced with pepper and sage is called "livermush" (possibly brought south from Philadelphia by German immigrants).

This collection sets a very high and enjoyable standard for the entire Cornbread series.

Robert C. Ross 2008
Robert C. Ross 2008

Cornbread Nation 3: Foods Of The Mountain South is the third such collection from the Appalachians and Ozarks and blends the best of Southern regional food writings - a blend which includes poems, essays, culinary history and cultural insights aplenty. Any expecting a recipe collection alone may be disappointed; but there are plenty of Southern cookbooks on the market - and relatively few Southern collections of literary food writing, making Cornbread Nation something to relish.

The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South. Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

"Geographically, that region is defined as the Appalachian range beginning in Maryland and West Virginia and extending to the northernmost hills of Alabama, plus the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri. Culinarily, those borders extend farther to include eastern Texas ... also the fingers of the hillbilly diaspora that stretched north into the factories of Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, Indiana, and south and east into the mills of the Carolina lowlands."

Ronni Lundy continues in her introduction:

"In other words, looking through the lens of real Southern mountain food -- the methods of its growing, processing and eating -- we began to see a vivid picture of the region and its people that had little in common with their most prevalent and demeaning stereotypes. ... How do you hold to assumptions of ignorance when you see a list of dozens of native greens, berries, barks and seeds that were turned into food and/or medicine? Or believe in clannishness and hostility when you hear the catechism of a Loaves and Fishes ethic that made friends and strangers alike welcome at mountain tables?"

This book contains a few recipes, but it is more about people's connection to the land and to each other, and what food says about a people. It describes families and meals: pole beans, mutton, fried pies, beaten biscuits with homemade apple jelly, pawpaws (also known as custard apples), wild greens in the spring and syrup-boiling festivals in the fall. Even possum: Joel Davis writes it "doesn't taste like chicken -- no, sir. ... To my undereducated palate, it resembles pot roast."

The book is divided into six sections: "Planting the Essential Seeds: Corn and Beans," "Raising Consciousness," "Cultivating Community," "The Meat of the Matter," "The Harvest," and "Food and Love." Poets and authors include Nikki Giovanni, Rick Bragg, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Jim Wayne Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Early, and Marilou Awiakta.

Two of my favorite essays: Rick Bragg tells how Cajun cooking cures a broken heart. David Cecelski sings "The Oyster Shucker's Song" about the Carolina oyster industry.

Altogether, this book is a buffet of Southern writing -- and a delicious series of meals for this reviewer.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Mark Cryan is to books about baseball in North Carolina as Josh Hamilton is to home run derbies in New York.

Any baseball fan planning a summer trip through North Carolina would do well to bring this book along. The author spent a decade and a half working in baseball all over the state - in the Carolina League, the Coastal Plain League, and the Appalachian League.
The book recounts North Carolina's rich baseball history, offers detailed descriptions of her grand old (and new) ballparks, and even provides information food and lodging.

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.

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."

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

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!!