Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont has an extensive and legendary tradition of automobile racing. Soon after 1904, when the first car was registered in Charlotte, autos became a part of everyday life. Car racing was just around the bend: an open-road race was run through Charlotte as early as 1908. Many drivers themselves have hailed from the area, and some are said to have received early training by running moonshine and outrunning authorities. Probably the best-known aspect of Carolina racing is the Queen City's involvement since 1949 with NASCAR, which hosts many of its big names and operations. Auto Racing in Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont explores the story behind the various forms of the sport, the kinds of people who have raced, and the reasons why they have done so. Historic photographs-many never before published-trace the history of NASCAR and look beyond the professional aspect to include the dragracers, wannabees, kids, and just plain amateurs participating in this cultural phenomenon. The story includes the first formal oval track, constructed entirely of wooden planks and opened in 1925. Other famous Charlotte locations, including professional dirt tracks, drag strips, and even a paved track dedicated to Soap Box Derby, are also revisited. Images of fans, mechanics, and hangers-on round out this singular journey of racing in the Carolinas.

The rapid evolution of Charlotte, North Carolina, from “regional backwater” to globally ascendant city provides stark contrasts of then and now. Once a regional manufacturing and textile center, Charlotte stands today as one of the nation’s premier banking and financial cores with interests reaching broadly into global markets. Once defined by its biracial and bicultural character, Charlotte is now an emerging immigrant gateway drawing newcomers from Latin America and across the globe. Once derided for its sleepy, nine-to-five “uptown,” Charlotte’s center city has been wholly transformed by residential gentrification, corporate headquarters construction, and amenity-based redevelopment. And yet, despite its rapid transformation, Charlotte remains distinctively southern—globalizing, not yet global. This book brings together an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars and local experts to examine Charlotte from multiple angles. Their topics include the banking industry, gentrification, boosterism, architecture, city planning, transit, public schools, NASCAR, and the African American and Latino communities. United in the conviction that the experience of this Sunbelt city—center of the nation’s fifth-largest metropolitan area—offers new insight into today’s most pressing urban and suburban issues, the contributors to Charlotte, NC: The Global Evolution of a New South City ask what happens when the external forces of globalization combine with a city’s internal dynamics to reshape the local structures, landscapes, and identities of a southern place.

Tour the Old North State's famous--and not-so-famous--historic sites. "First in Freedom," "First in Flight," and "First, Farthest and Last" are all honorifics that have been used to describe North Carolina's well-known history. Learn the truth behind each of these epithets and other tales from the sands of the Outer Banks to the bustling cities of the Piedmont and the western mountains. Tour the state's famous historic homes, gardens and cemeteries. Dive deep into its military conflicts, from the golden age of piracy to the Second World War. "Join North Carolina's veteran historian, Michael C. Hardy, for an exploration of the many sites, monuments, museums, and public spaces that tell story of North Carolina's history.

Southeastern Geographer is published by UNC Press for the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (www.sedaag.org). The quarterly journal publishes the academic work of geographers and other social and physical scientists, and features peer-reviewed articles and essays that reflect sound scholarship and contain significant contributions to geographical understanding, with a special interest in work that focuses on the southeastern United States. Table of Contents, Volume 51, Number 1: Introduction: Robert Brinkmann and Graham Tobin Economic Geography in the South Guest Editor: James O. Wheeler Introduction: Economic Geography in the South James O. Wheeler The Furniture Foothills and the Spatial Fix: Globalization in the Furniture Industry Susan M. Walcott Mapping NASCAR Valley: Charlotte as a Knowledge Community Ron L. Mitchelson and Derek H. Alderman The Southern Culture of Risk Capital: The Path Dependence of Entrepreneurial Finance William Graves Renewable Energy in North Carolina: The Potential Supply Chain and Connections to Existing Renewable and Energy Efficiency Firms Keith G. Debbage and Jacob F. Kidd African American and Hispanic Self-Employment in the Charlotte Metropolitan Area Qingfang Wang Papers Hurricane Katrina as a Lens for Assessing Socio-Spatial Change in New Orleans Case Watkins and Ronald R. Hagelman, III Drought and Other Driving Forces behind Population Change in Six Rural Counties in the United States Justin T. Maxwell and Peter T. Soule Mapping Existing and Potential River Cane (Arundinaria gigantea) Habitat in Western North Carolina Joni L. Bugden, Christopher D. Storie, Carey L. Burda Under-Tapped? An Analysis of Craft Brewing in the Southern United States James Baginski and Thomas L. Bell Citizenship Contested: The 1930s Domestic Migrant Experience in California's San Joaquin Valley Toni Alexander Book Reviews: Perspectives on Carbon Trade Reviewed by Mary Finley-Brook Carbon Markets: An International Business Guide Arnaud Brohe, Nick Eyre, and Nicholas Howarth Carbon Trading: How It Works and Why It Fails Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes

A comprehensive view of the fascinating folklife in the Appalachian foothills of North and South Carolina

The story of NASCAR's preeminent family and the multibillion dollar sport they helped create. From mid-century dirt tracks to today's super speedways, The Earnhardts: A Biography tells the remarkable story of a racing family—Dale, his father Ralph, and son Dale Jr.—whose careers span the full history of NASCAR and whose accomplishments define this unique American motorsport. Drawing on extensive research, including interviews with friends, family, and sports writers covering the NASCAR scene, Gerry Souter follows the Earnhardts' story from Ralph's short track racing in cars he built himself to Dale's record-setting career and shocking death to Dale Jr.'s emergence as one of the sport's most popular figures today. Through the lives of the Earnhardts, and their unmatched legacy of hard work and victory, readers see American stock car racing evolve from its rural Southern roots into a nationwide phenomenon.

Bootleggers, swindlers, gold miners and serial killersCharlotte has courted them all. The Queen City is renowned for its skyline, sports teams and dizzying growth, but just below its smooth, polished exterior lies a dark past full of crime and myriad misdeeds. This second history of Charlotte has been concealed and denied by those who retell the citys story, and by those who have lived it. Until now. In Wicked Charlotte, discover the tale of the Chicago gangsters who invaded the city looking to pull a heist to fund sinister maneuverings in their bosss criminal trial. Learn how a golden nugget found in a nearby creek changed Charlotte from a trading crossroads into a rough and tumble town full of fortune seekers bent on finding a quick dollar and instant riches. And read about the details of the death of one of Charlottes most gifted writers, who met his end in a seedy hotel room in Mexico. This raucous book sheds light on these incidents and many more, revealing a side of Charlottes history that few will recognize. The sordid events described here took place on familiar streets and in well known neighborhoods, but rarely have the stories passed beyond the circles of those who lived them. Charlotte has played host to a multitude of villainous characters, and has seen scores of unsavory deeds played out on its shadowy streets. Wicked Charlotte brings it all to the forefront, as never before.