North Carolina Gazetteer, 2nd Ed: A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places and Their History

The North Carolina Gazetteer first appeared to wide acclaim in 1968 and has remained an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the Tar Heel State, from historians to journalists, from creative writers to urban planners, from backpackers to armchair travelers. This revised and expanded edition adds approximately 1,200 new entries, bringing to nearly 21,000 the number of North Carolina cities, towns, crossroads, waterways, mountains, and other places identified here. The stories attached to place names are at the core of the book and the reason why it has stood the test of time. Some recall faraway places: Bombay, Shanghai, Moscow, Berlin. Others paint the locality as a little piece of heaven on earth: Bliss, Splendor, Sweet Home. In many cases the name derivations are unusual, sometimes wildly so: Cat Square, Huggins Hell, Tater Hill, Whynot. Telling us much about our own history in these snapshot histories of particular locales, The North Carolina Gazetteer provides an engaging, authoritative, and fully updated reference to place names from all corners of the Tar Heel State.

A blend of oral history and memoir with a good dose of quirky humor, Tar Heel Traveler: New Journeys Across North Carolina is a celebratory look at the people and places of North Carolina. WRAL-TV reporter Scott Mason—the Tar Heel Traveler—profiles colorful characters and out-of-the-way places. The sequel consists of all new material and showcases twenty-five of Mason’s most memorable television stories along with the amusing stories behind each.

Rameses takes us on an adventure on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Law professor and civil rights activist Geeta Kapur chronicles systemic racism in leadership, scholarship, and organizational foundations at University of Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina is the oldest public university in the US, with the cornerstone for the first dormitory, Old East, laid in 1793. At that ceremony, the enslaved people who would literally build that structure were not acknowledged; they were not even present. In fact, 158 years passed before Black students were admitted to this university in Chapel Hill, and it was another 66 years after that before students forcibly removed the long-criticized Confederate "Silent Sam" monument. Indeed, this university, revered in the state and the nation, has been entwined with white supremacy and institutional racism throughout its history--and the struggle continues today. To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation's Oldest Public University explores the history of UNC by exposing the plain and uncomfortable truth behind the storied brick walkways, "historic" statuary, and picturesque covered well, the icon of the campus. Law professor and civil rights activist Geeta Kapur chronicles the racism in the leadership, scholarship, and organizational foundations of the school and traces its insidious effects on students, faculty, and even the venerable Tarheel sports programs. Kapur explores the Chapel Hill campus and a parallel movement in nearby Durham, where a growing Black middle class helped to create North Carolina Central University, a historically Black public university.

Hess tells the full story of "Pettigrew's Brigade," perhaps the best-known and most successful of North Carolina's units during the Civil War. The brigade played a central role in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg and also fought with distinction during the Petersburg campaign and in later battles including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor.