"December 1, 1955. Floodgates are poised to slam shut on a concrete dam straddling the Oogasula River, creating a lake that will submerge a forgotten crossroads and thousands of acres of woodlands in
The 1950s were simple times to grow up. For Lewis Grizzard and his buddies, gallivanting meant hanging out at the local store, eating Zagnut candy bars and drinking "Big Orange bellywashers." About th
Welcome to the South as only Kirk H. Neely can describe it. In Banjos, Barbecue, and Boiled Peanuts, Neely uses his precise eye, keen ear, and down-home voice to capture small truths of life in the So
Rooted in places like Watauga County, Goshen Creek, and Dismal Mountain, the poems in Ron Rash’s fourth collection, Waking, electrify dry counties and tobacco fields until they sparkle with the ritual
During the past century Spartanburg has produced an abundance of world-class artists and dispersed them across the world. At the same time, the city has become a magnet for painters, sculptors, cerami
Well, Shut My Mouth! The Sweet Potatoes Restaurant Cookbook is recipes—recipes from the restaurant, recipes from the families of chef Stephanie Tyson and co-owner Vivian Joiner, recipes that are South
Have you ever been to the mountains of western North Carolina and wanted to see the scenery but escape the crowds? Maybe you were tempted to take off down a side road but hesitated, fearful of getting
In Home is Where, Kwame Dawes compiles the work of more than two dozen African-American poets from the Carolinas, showcasing a vast array of original voices writing on subjects ranging from Jim Crow t
When Wilbur and Orville Wright arrived on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in the year 1900, they were unknown bicycle mechanics who dreamed of powered flight. Even after they achieved the first heavier-t
In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright opened the first US civilian flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. Author Julie Hedgepeth Williams chronicles the short life of this flight school as seen mainly thr
Two classic collections of freedom songs, We Shall Overcome (1963) and Freedom Is A Constant Struggle (1968), are reprinted here in a single edition which includes a major new introduction by the edit
Dr. Robert Baldwin would be the first to tell you that he used to be an average white Southern male; a family man with conservative ideals and a growing medical practice, he was living out his life wi
America seems to have little sense of how the Civil Rights Movement actually played into southern politics over the remainder of the twentieth Century. The common vision is a monolithic struggle betw
Nationally syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, winner of the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest reporting, turns her sharp eye on herself in this frank, exhilarating, wise, poignant, and bra
The 1878 City Directory of Montgomery, Alabama, included “A Brief History of Montgomery,” consisting of a “narrative” and a series of events arranged by the months. Compiled by Matthew Powers Blue, t
In Macon County, Alabama, badly hit by the Depression, people were already poor, trying to farm land depleted by years of over use. The Resettlement Administration, a New Deal entity, gave the farmers
Junior Ray Loveblood, one of the most outrageous and original personalities to appear in American literature in many years, returns in The Yazoo Blues, the sequel to John Pritchard's Junior Ray. Now
For over a decade, syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been spending several months a year in Southwest Louisiana, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Unlike many other writers who have pa
In this exquisitely wrought memoir of a committed life, historian and civil rights activist Paul Gaston reveals his deep roots in the unique utopian community founded in 1894 by his grandfather on the
Down on his luck, a farmer raffles off a dead mule. While preparing a Sunday dinner, a woman finds her lost diamond in a chicken gizzard. A litter of orphaned baby possums finds a home. Just like his
