With an annual attendance of 800,000, the North Carolina State Fair is the state's largest event and is the largest ten-day agricultural fair in the United States. Published jointly with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, this volume is the most comprehensive account of the people, politics, and events that have shaped the annual autumn event. Over three hundred photographs, many in full color, vividly portray the fair's history.

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina's extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state's music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina's Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina's sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

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.

"A fine addition to the study of urbanization. . . . (Michael) Shirley's book will appeal not only to a regional audience in the South but also to all students of the diverse American experience".--AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW. "Compelling. . . . (an) important contribution to our understanding of the modernizing of America".--JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY. 17 illustrations.

Who doesn't love the bustle and jangle, the smells, the sounds, the energy, and the tastes of a lively state fair? In this fast-changing world, keeping any endeavor alive and thriving for 150 years is an accomplishment, but the South Carolina State Fair has met any challenges with doggedness, determination, and flair. In the early 1700s South Carolinians were gathering to exchange information about crops and livestock, and small rural fairs were held, enhanced by horse racing, raffles, and other diversions to draw in the populace. The State Agricultural Society of South Carolina was founded in 1839 and held its first annual fair and stock show in November of the following year. In 1869 the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina was founded to revive the fair and has presented a fair in every year except 1918. The South Carolina State Fair has a long and storied history from those early days to its current "meet me at the rocket" days. Those initial fair goers would have been astonished to see the rocket, a Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile, greeting them as they arrived on the grounds. The long story of the fair is inextricably bound to the history of South Carolina, of course, and indeed the history of the United States. Stroup ably weaves many strands together through archival records, newspaper reports, anecdotes (have you heard about the "Schara-mouche-Dance by a person from London?") and vintage artifacts, illustrations, paintings, and photographs from the fair's inception to the present. The fair has been an admixture of serious agricultural and animal husbandry and pure entertainment—the scandalous as well as the wholesome, and Stroup investigates them all, from the "Colored State Fair" to the infamous "girlie shows" to the prizes won for livestock—and touches on characters as diverse as Preston Brooks and Seabiscuit. As lively and entertaining as a state fair itself, Meet Me at the Rocket is as thorough a history of an important state institution as can be found. Buy a cotton candy, visit the exhibits, ride the merry-go-round, and enjoy this singular exploration of South Carolina's agriculture and industry, its science and art and history. A foreword is provided by Walter Edgar, the Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of South Carolina: A History, editor of The South Carolina Encyclopedia, and host of the radio program Walter Edgar's Journal.

Are you considered a "dingbatter," or outsider, when you visit the Outer Banks? Have you ever noticed a picture in your house hanging a little "sigogglin," or crooked? Do you enjoy spending time with your "buddyrow," or close friend? Drawing on over two decades of research and 3,000 recorded interviews from every corner of the state, Walt Wolfram and Jeffrey Reaser's lively book introduces readers to the unique regional, social, and ethnic dialects of North Carolina, as well as its major languages, including American Indian languages and Spanish. Considering how we speak as a reflection of our past and present, Wolfram and Reaser show how languages and dialects are a fascinating way to understand our state's rich and diverse cultural heritage. The book is enhanced by maps and illustrations and augmented by more than 100 audio and video recordings, which can be found online at talkintarheel.com.

Explains the crucial factors that spinners, knitters and weavers need to know in order to create yarn, describing 21 different breeds of sheep, their characteristics and history and the structure, grease content and fiber diameter of each one's fleece.