Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930

The most visited site in the National Park system, the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway winds along the ridges of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia and North Carolina. According to most accounts, the Parkway was a New Deal "Godsend for the needy," built without conflict or opposition by landscape architects and planners who traced their vision along a scenic, isolated southern landscape. The historical archives relating to this massive public project, however, tell a different and much more complicated story, which Anne Mitchell Whisnant relates in this revealing history of the beloved roadway.

Once upon a time, Chapel Hill, a town synonymous with the University of North Carolina, offered little more than simple cafés. In recent years, it has developed a diverse restaurant culture and today is home to some of the country's most creative chefs. From legendary student hangouts to one of the South's most famed barbecue joints to the birthplace of shrimp and grits, all of these establishments helped earn the area recognition as a top dining destination. Local authors Chris Holaday and Patrick Cullom profile longtime establishments that helped shape the dining scene in Chapel Hill and the neighboring towns of Carrboro and Hillsborough.

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South. But there is much more to this story than is commonly told. In Game Changers, Art Chansky reveals an intense saga of race, college sport, and small-town politics. At the center were two young men, Scott and Smith, both destined for greatness but struggling through challenges on and off the court, among them the storms of civil rights protest and the painfully slow integration of a Chapel Hill far less progressive than its reputation today might suggest. Drawing on extensive personal interviews and a variety of other sources, Chansky takes readers beyond the basketball court to highlight the community that supported Smith and Scott during these demanding years, from assistant basketball coach John Lotz and influential pastor the Reverend Robert Seymour to pioneering African American mayor Howard Lee. Dispelling many myths that surround this period, Chansky nevertheless offers an ultimately triumphant portrait of a student-athlete and coach who ensured the University of North Carolina would never be the same.

There is more about David's personal life than anyone in the Bible - he is the most real, passionate, bawdy man in all of scripture. Outside of Jesus, there is no one in all of scripture with more information and insight into a person's heart intentions and motivations than David. This is no polished view of a man, but a ragged-edged reality in which we see humanness and manliness being formed with much coarseness - a spiritual earthiness of a man who is full of emotion and honesty.