Located in the western piedmont of North Carolina, Yadkin County was hardly a hotbed of rebellion at the start of the Civil War. Many of the 1,200 men from Yadkin who served in the Confederate Army did so with distinction, but a number deserted. Some of these holed up in the Bond School House, and when the militia attempted to arrest them, four were killed and several others were wounded. This is a comprehensive accounting of how the county responded to the Civil War and the effect it had on Yadkin's citizens, civilian and military alike.

This sweeping history of Durham County, North Carolina, extends from the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth.

Many Excellent People examines the nature of North Carolina's social system, particularly race and class relations, power, and inequality, during the last half of the nineteenth century. Paul Escott portrays North Carolina's major social groups, focusing on the elite, the ordinary white farmers or workers, and the blacks, and analyzes their attitudes, social structure, and power relationships. Quoting frequently from a remarkable array of letters, journals, diaries, and other primary sources, he shows vividly the impact of the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Populism, and the rise of the New South industrialism on southern society. Working within the new social history and using detailed analyses of five representative counties, wartime violence, Ku Klux Klan membership, stock-law legislation, and textile mill records, Escott reaches telling conclusions on the interplay of race, class, and politics. Despite fundamental political and economic reforms, Escott argues, North Carolina's social system remained as hierarchical and undemocratic in 1900 as it had been in 1850.

Most historians agree that only a small share of southern blacks experienced economic gains in the fifty years following the Civil War. Little attention has been focused, however, on the minority who successfully acquired property and conducted business during this time. In Enterprising Southerners, Robert C. Kenzer examines the characteristics of North Carolina's African-American population in order to explain the social and political factors that shaped economic opportunity for this group from the Civil War until 1915. What is surprising, Kenzer asserts, is that his research does not support lingering theories that the "heritage of slavery" adversely affected blacks' performance in the market economy. Instead, he blames economic barriers to development, such as lack of capital and poorly developed markets. This study not only provides a valuable history of one state's black population, but also paves the way for similar scholarship in other southern states.

In 14 reprinted essays that bring together his work in the fields of race relations, ethnicity, and urban history, Rabinowitz introduces readers to some of the most important recent developments in these fields, including the changing assessments of the nature of black leadership, the origins of segregation, the expansion of urban history to include the South and the West, and the writing of ethnic history. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR