The definitive collection of North Carolina's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things, for North Carolina residents and anyone else who enjoys local humor and trivia with a twist.

This laugh-out-loud guide will introduce readers to the offbeat people, places, and events of the Tar Heel State.

Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Tar Heel State has to offer! Whether you’re a born-and-raised North Carolinian, a recent transplant, or just passing through, North Carolina Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as Jon Elliston, Kent Priestley, and Constance E. Richards take you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Tar Heel State. Visit DINO-Kinetics, a fascinating collection of life-size welded-steel pterodactyls and other dinosaurs that belch smoke, roar, and rattle. Learn how dozens of dachshunds dominate a town on Weiner Dog Day; how Christmas in July is a hot holiday to celebrate; and how locals make melodic mouth music at the International Whistlers Convention. Meet an out-of-this-world “ufologist”; a quirky exotic-animal-collecting rancher; and a real-life pirate and his homemade ship—definitely a treasure to behold!

Colonial America presented a new world of natural curiosities for settlers as well as the London-based scientific community. In American Curiosity, Susan Scott Parrish examines how various peoples in the British colonies understood and represented the natural world around them from the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth. Parrish shows how scientific knowledge about America, rather than flowing strictly from metropole to colony, emerged from a horizontal exchange of information across the Atlantic. Delving into an understudied archive of letters, Parrish uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world. Although hierarchies of gender, class, institutional learning, place of birth or residence, and race persisted within the natural history community, the contributions of any participant were considered valuable as long as they supplied novel data or specimens from the American side of the Atlantic. Thus Anglo-American nonelites, women, Indians, and enslaved Africans all played crucial roles in gathering and relaying new information to Europe. Recognizing a significant tradition of nature writing and representation in North America well before the Transcendentalists, American Curiosity also enlarges our notions of the scientific Enlightenment by looking beyond European centers to find a socially inclusive American base to a true transatlantic expansion of knowledge.

Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Sunflower State has to offer! Whether you’re a born-and-raised Kansan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, Kansas Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as Pam Grout takes you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Sunflower State. Visit the Museum of the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things—and get your own largest ball starter kit. Meet more chainsaw-wielding, glow-in-the-dark-scrap-metal-zoo-building, grapefruit-peel-sculpting, papier-mâché-mixing, porcelain-pig-painting grassroots artists than you can shake a stick at! Get a load of Big Brutus, a sixteen-story coal shovel that has become a popular tourist attraction; and discover the thrill of an indoor hurricane—it’ll blow you away.

From the first colonization at Roanoke Island, the bizarre and inexplicable have shrouded the Tar Heel State. From history and legend, John Harden records ominous events that have shaped or colored state history.

Take a walk on the beach with three coastal experts who reveal the secrets and the science of the North Carolina shoreline. What makes sea foam? What are those tiny sand volcanoes along the waterline? You'll find the answers to these questions and dozens more in this comprehensive field guide to the state's beaches, which shows visitors how to decipher the mysteries of the beach and interpret clues to an ever-changing geological story. Orrin Pilkey, Tracy Monegan Rice, and William Neal explore large-scale processes, such as the composition and interaction of wind, waves, and sand, as well as smaller features, such as bubble holes, drift lines, and black sands. In addition, coastal life forms large and small--from crabs and turtles to microscopic animals--are all discussed here. The concluding chapter contemplates the future of North Carolina beaches, considering the threats to their survival and assessing strategies for conservation. This indispensable beach book offers vacationers and naturalists a single source for learning to appreciate and preserve the natural features of a genuine state treasure. Southern Gateways Guide is a registered trademark of the University of North Carolina Press