EileenNorth McGrath, compilerCarolina Books

The North Carolina Gazetteer: communities. Also of help to Hill were reference These letters from Lawrence to Bridgers illuminate tools such as a four-volume guide to Tar Heel post a complex friendship. The few letters from Ann and A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places offices published by the North Carolina Postal Emily further reveal the bond among these women. and Their History History Society, the National Gazetteer of the One wishes for more. United States of America, and the Omni Gazetteer William S. Powell and Michael Hill, eds. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: of the United States of America, all of which post- Elizabeth Lawrence is to American garden University of North Carolina date Powell’s edition. Hill added some places of writing what M. F. K. Fisher is to food writing – Press, 2010. 581 pp. $70.00. particular interest to him and others—The Bullhole, literate, poetic, opinionated, knowledgeable, ripe. ISBN 978-0-8078-3399-5 (trade cloth). $25.00. ISBN for example—that represent interesting stories. He During her lifetime, Lawrence published five 978-0-8078-7138-6 (trade updated some entries, including those for counties books. After her death in 1985 a volume of her paper). and towns, to reflect changes in agricultural or newspaper columns, two of letters, and a luminous manufacturing production. biography appeared. Unlike Fisher, Lawrence remained a private, warm, southerner. She was a eference librarians, Physically, the new edition is similar to the original daughter devoted to family, friends, neighbors, Rhistorians, one. The two-column format has been retained, church, community, and a far-flung cadre of genealogists, writers, although the columns are no longer right justified. correspondents. All these supported her love of and many other users Entries are still alphabetized by letter instead of by nature and garden. Elizabeth Lawrence lived in a will be delighted by the word, a practice that may confuse some readers. quaint fast-dissolving past (she loved old people) publication of the second edition of William S. A useful new feature is the addition of headers and embraced the future (she adored children). In a Powell’s classic North Carolina Gazetteer. Edited that allow the user to determine at a glance the quiet but forthright way she expressed her family’s by Michael Hill, the research supervisor for the alphabetical range of names on each page. liberal heritage on matters of race and war. North Carolina Office of Archives and History, the second edition preserves most of the content The North Carolina Gazetteer is an indispensable As Lawrence matured as a writer, she showed herself of the original publication while correcting errors, reference tool in libraries of all kinds, and librarians to be a uniquely engaging person with a capacity for judiciously adding new entries, and making minor will want to update their collections to include this true friendship. Her innate tenderness recognized changes in format. excellent new edition. the value of every person and experience. Her bravery took each to heart. She was shy but not so The passage of more than forty years since the Maurice C. York shy as to avoid speaking her mind. She could appear publication of the first edition in 1968 is testimony East Carolina University a little eccentric—she learned from gardening to to the book’s enduring value. For many years love experiment and take risks; both failure and William S. Powell, curator of the North Carolina success were her companions. Ann and Emily Collection at the University of North Carolina Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: taught her to tighten and edit in the same way she at Chapel Hill, gleaned place names from census gardened. Along the way Lawrence became herself records, county highway and soil maps, state and Discovered Letters of a – an apt title for this charming, oddly profound federal documents, David Leroy Corbitt’s The Southern Gardener book. Formation of the North Carolina Counties, and many other sources; and in compiling the Gazetteer Emily Herring Wilson, ed. Emily Wilson has edited these letters with the same he relied on the assistance of his wife, colleagues, Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, delicate brilliance she brought to her Lawrence and a large number of volunteers throughout the Publisher, 2010. 315 pp. biography, , and to the letters $19.95. ISBN 978-0-89587- No One Gardens Alone state. The 19,638 entries in the first edition contain 375-0. between Lawrence and Katherine White published basic facts pertaining to the state’s cities and towns, as Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters. Aside bodies of water, and physical features, but it is the he grass is from adding another essential volume to the origins of the place names and the stories associated always greener Lawrence canon, this book also offers a poignant with them that give the work its widespread appeal. “T when she leaves. Have look into the period between the two world wars, As a work of scholarship, the has held up Gazetteer you noticed how some a time of rapidly changing society. Lawrence’s well; indeed, it has few, if any, peers in other states. people sear it?” Only a portrait of Raleigh seems familiar, joyful, yet sadly year into a three-decade lost. The book concludes with the passings of friends Michael Hill enhanced his predecessor’s work correspondence, at age 31, Elizabeth Lawrence and family, a move to Charlotte with Elizabeth’s by adding approximately 1,200 entries. Some of wrote these words to Ann Preston Bridgers mother to be next to her sister, Elizabeth’s greatest the places—Jordan Lake is an example—did not about Ann’s mother. Ann, a neighbor in Raleigh, achievements in writing, and the creation of her exist in 1968. Many others were found through a thirteen years older, and renowned for writing the famous garden (now an historic site). careful examination of D. C. Mangum’s Historical The reader leaves enlarged not only by Lawrence’s Broadway play Coquette, had recently become one Compendium and County Gazetteer of North of Lawrence’s primary correspondents and her chief passions, but by her example of deep friendship and , published in 1901 by Rand, McNally Carolina writing mentor. Ann’s sister, Emily, a writer too, wisdom. “You know, every now and then you meet & Company. This map enabled Hill to discern also aided Lawrence. Lawrence’s comment about with a book that makes you start at the beginning which post offices (a category Powell deliberately Ann’s mother displays her trademark: ironic delight and think through again all of your hard-won omitted in most cases) were associated with actual that often spotlighted an elegant, pointed wisdom. ideas.” It’s like that.

North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 23 Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence is an essential for violent upheaval. The content, though revealing municipal overthrow, the day itself, and the public or academic libraries with gardening or and enlightening throughout, can sometimes be aftermath. As the author explores the actions North Carolina history collections, and a valuable difficult for modern sensibilities, since it oscillates of the Democratic Party and influential white addition to any secondary, public, or academic frequently from vituperation against Yankee businessmen she makes the case that the riot itself library’s collection on the writing craft or memoirs. treachery, to vitriolic racism, to an exasperating was the result of a conspiracy. Umfleet meticulously naiveté about the duties and responsibilities of an sets the stage by drawing on a variety of primary and Jeffery Beam occupying force. Throughout the diary, Browning secondary sources, including some controversial University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has painstakingly traced every name mentioned; sources, in order to paint a vivid picture of footnoted and explained every incident or battle; Wilmington society. She explores the development and sourced every quotation. Browning’s sources, of the Fusion Party, formed by the merger of the The Southern Mind under mentioned in the footnotes and the bibliography, Populist and Republican Parties. Political cartoons are standard works, and as such are both scholarly convey the intensity of the political climate during Union Rule: The Diary of and easily accessible. 1898 and the escalating tensions leading to the riot. James Rumley With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War The text is accompanied by a wealth of maps, James Rumley. Beaufort, approaching, interest in the conflict is likely to photographs, and other illustrative materials. North Carolina, 1862-1865. rise exponentially. Rumley’s diary provides a rare Umfleet includes a significant amount of Edited by Judkin Brown- ing. Gainesville: University window into Confederate thinking under Union supplemental material including appendices Press of Florida, 2009. 199 pp. rule, and would be of value to many North Carolina listing major participants and brief biographical $34.95. 978-0-8130-3407-2. libraries, especially those with strong military or sketches of key figures. Extensive notes accompany Civil War collections. the text; there is also a bibliography. A Day of Blood is recommended for academic libraries as arly in the American Steven Case well as libraries that maintain a collection about ECivil War (by April State Library of North Carolina Wilmington history. 1862), a significant portion of the North Dea Miller Rice Carolina coastal plain A Day of Blood: The 1898 Appalachian State University had fallen to the forces of Union General Ambrose Wilmington Race Riot Burnside. For most of the war, then, Beaufort and much of the surrounding countryside was under Kay Kyser: The Ol’ Professor Union military jurisdiction. Since the campaign LeRae Sikes Umfleet. Raleigh: of Sing! America’s Forgotten had been relatively swift, the devastation and North Carolina Office of Archives dislocation usually attendant on a military incursion and History, 2009. 288 pp. $18.00. Superstar was absent. The local civil infrastructure was intact, ISBN 978-0-86526-344-4. but obviously dependent on, and subservient to, Steven Beasley. Northridge, the military government. Such a situation was CA: Richland Creek Publish- ing, 2009. 341 pp. $23.95. ISBN fraught with difficulty for both sides. The Union n November 10, 1898, 978-0-615-31983-4. had to enforce its will without antagonizing the Owhite supremacists inhabitants so much that they would rise in open in Wilmington, North e didn’t look like a rebellion. The local population, entirely reliant on Carolina overthrew the cheerleader. Even the occupying forces for their economic and social legally elected Republican government in the only H as a freshman, Rocky welfare, had to remain loyal Confederates, while successful coup d’état in United States history. The Mount’s James Kern still being obedient enough to maintain the Union’s attack was not a spontaneous action but rather a Kyser bore more than a good will, and, therefore, their own livelihoods. well-planned, violent insurrection carried out by white businessmen to regain power lost in recent little resemblance to the stereotypical absent-minded professor. So, when This delicate balancing act finds a fascinating elections. The federal government did not intervene this professorial-looking undergraduate strode representative voice in the diary of James Rumley, and the perpetrators went unpunished. The impact onto the University of North Carolina’s Emerson a Clerk of Court for Carteret County, and an of the events in Wilmington led to increased Field during a 1927 baseball game to tryout as a unrepentant Confederate. The diary, ably edited and oppression of African Americans throughout cheerleader, he took the spiritless crowd completely annotated by Judkin Browning, a military historian North Carolina and to Jim Crow legislation at state by surprise, shouting, “Gang, let’s give five rahs at Appalachian State University, covers the period and local levels. for the Baptist Church!” To the astonishment of from 1862 through 1865, thus encompassing nearly just about everyone present, including Kyser, the the entirety of the war and also the first tentative LeRae Sikes Umfleet is Chief of Collections crowd was soon “yelling their heads off ” for the steps of Reconstruction. Browning’s introductory Management for the North Carolina Department denomination. A showbiz career was born. essay reveals the somewhat problematic provenance of Cultural Resources. The Wilmington Race Riot of the work (the original no longer exists, but Commission (WRRC), established by the North James Kern “Kay” Kyser has not one, but two stars the text has been reconstituted from two other Carolina General Assembly in 2000, authorized her on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Despite the fact sources), as well as putting the diary in a larger research. Her original report, released in 2005, was that he played no instrument and couldn’t read social and military context. The diary itself consists revised and re-released in 2006. She received the a note of music, from the 1930s through the late of entries of varying lengths—some a single American Association for State and Local History’s 1940s, Kyser was one of America’s most popular sentence, others running to several pages filled Award of Merit and WOW! Award for the report. big band leaders. He had eleven number one hit with high flown rhetorical flourishes—that detail A Day of Blood grew out of her research report. records, including and the the military, social, and economic consequences Ole Buttermilk Sky , and 35 other top ten songs of continuous occupation. Rumley’s ruminations, A Day of Blood follows a chronological format, Woody Woodpecker Song including obviously those of an educated man, provide a beginning with the Civil War and Reconstruction Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and . window into the code by which he sought to live and ending at the dawn of the First World War. White Cliffs of Dover Kay Kyser’s Kollege of , on the air from 1933 to1949, even as the society underpinning that code was in Umfleet examines the factors leading to the Musical Knowledge

24 North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 was one of the most popular shows on radio. Haven on the Hill: personalized the text more. The physical format Dressed in academic gown and mortarboard as of the book—an 8.5 x 11 inch paperback—makes “the ol perfessor,” Kyser kicked off each of these A History of North Carolina’s it awkward to hold for casual reading, but the shows with “Evening folks, how y’all?” before tying Dorothea Dix Hospital extensive notes section, bibliography, and 21-page together a string of comic quizzes, swing music, index make it a highly usable reference work. ballads, and novelty tunes with his own engaging Marjorie O’Rorke. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, personality. He appeared in movies alongside the North Carolina Department of Given the decade-long attempt by some mental likes of Lucille Ball, John Barrymore, Jane Wyman, Cultural Resources, 2010. 321 health reformers, commercial developers, and Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff; had one of the first pp. $18.00. ISBN 978-0-86526- others to close Dorothea Dix and repurpose its television programs on NBC; and turned up in 332-1. prime real estate, this book is a timely reminder of Warner Brothers’ cartoons and a Batman comic the hospital’s important history and of the state’s on book. going need for quality mental health care. he thought of mental Kay Kyser was the first bandleader to play before a Thealth institutions This book is recommended especially for medical military audience. During World War II he and his may elicit images of libraries, but also for academic and larger public band endeared themselves to America by travelling padded rooms and libraries with readers interested in the history of to more than 500 military installations to play lounges filled with sedated individuals staring out medical services in North Carolina. USO shows. He also contributed to the war effort windows. Haven on the Hill: A History of North by being one of the most successful of celebrity war Carolina’s Dorothea Dix Hospital largely shatters C. William Gee bond salesmen. He helped organize and lead the those popular images. In this history Marjorie East Carolina University Hollywood Bond Cavalcade, a traveling variety O’Rorke details how much activity took place at show that included the likes of Fred Astaire, Judy North Carolina’s first mental health hospital. Most Garland, Mickey Rooney, James Cagney, and the patients, while receiving some therapeutic care for Marx Brothers. By the end of World War II, Kay various mental disorders, epilepsy, and alcoholism, The Middle of the Air Kyser was one of the nation’s best-known celebrities. also managed to work in the hospital’s extensive farms, construction shops, gardens, and sewing Kenneth Butcher. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 2009. 307 pp. $22.95. Kyser grew tired of show business and retired to room, and to enjoy various amusements and the Chapel Hill in 1950 where he turned his attention beautiful grounds. ISBN 978-089587-371-2. to activities such as the “Good Health Movement” (which had begun during the previous decade) and O’Rorke, who holds a bachelor’s degree in history the creation of North Carolina Public Television. from Oberlin College and a nursing degree from ake a missing truck full He also became more involved in Christian Science, Yale University, has volunteered at Dix Hospital Tof radioactive material, eventually running the denomination’s television since the 1960s. She presents a thoroughly an unconventional western and film department. He was elected President researched chronological history of the hospital North Carolina family, of the Worldwide Church of Christian Science in from its inception in 1848 and through turbulent and an “ends justify the 1983. decades of changing patient populations, evolving means” Washington, DC practices, political intrigues, wars, racial divisions, administrator and put them all together. What do Steven Beasley wondered how such a prominent and devolution of centralized state care to regional you get? That’s a good question, and one that is man could fade from the nation’s memory so and local providers. She focuses heavily on the not altogether satisfactorily answered in Kenneth quickly. Beasley spent years collecting recordings, hospital’s administrative and medical leaders, Butcher’s debut novel The Middle of the Air. reminiscences, photographs, and memorabilia building projects, maintenance issues, and political related to the ol’ perfessor, all in the hopes of efforts to secure funding. While theories and While searching for petroglyphs near the making a documentary film about Rocky Mount’s methods of patient care are covered, they sometimes Appalachian Trail, archeologist Leon Colebrook, favorite son. Perhaps most importantly, Beasley seem asides to their political, cultural, and financial his wife Sue, and their implausibly precocious five- performed yeoman’s work in recording the stories context. Despite her evident love for the hospital, year-old daughter Audrey discover the wreckage of key Keyser colleagues, a number of whom are O’Rorke does not shy away from describing of a small unmanned aircraft. Leon’s brothers— no longer with us. While the film has yet to be unseemly practices and conditions when they Xavier, an engineering student, and Charles, an released, one result of all of this interviewing existed. As a detailed history of mental health care, engineer—help examine the parts, bringing them and collecting is this book, which in many ways this book is perhaps lacking; as a comprehensive all under government suspicion in the process. resembles the ultimate fan’s scrapbook. Bits and history of how Dix Hospital and (to a lesser extent) Their trying-to-retire father Philip, their candy pieces from interviews rub up against rare publicity other state mental health centers were created, store-owner mother Lilly, and their nonconformist stills, which precede quotes from industry press, adapted, and sustained for generations, O’Rorke painter grandfather Pipo are all drawn into the investigation of how a truck full of radioactive which come after mimeographed letters from show succeeds brilliantly. On a larger scale, Haven on material could disappear. sponsors, which rest beside playbills, which come the Hill demonstrates to the reader the powerful back around to the author’s own telling asides and impact federal and state governments have had on educated guesses. Reading his book, I couldn’t help health care for over one hundred and sixty years. The book contains generous doses of humor and but forgive the author for outbidding me on ebay some genuinely funny scenes, including a puppet for so many Kyser-related 78s. Collectors of North The author researched this book in various therapy session that takes a very wrong turn. The Caroliniana will want to add this item to their archives and libraries; she also conducted personal chapters are peppered with footnotes about animal shelves. interviews. The vast majority of the work is clearly behavior based on research conducted by the objective; occasional editorial remarks are easy to “Ecuadorian biophysicist Henrico Carr.” The notes As Kay would say, “C’mon, chillun! Le’s dance!” identify as such. Black and white photographs are creative and amusing, but reading them disrupts of buildings and people help the reader better the narrative flow and their relevance is only Kevin Cherry understand the conditions described in the text, marginally apparent towards the end of the book. Institute of Museum and Library Services but many are either recent pictures of buildings or portraits of leaders. Additional photographs The dust jacket description of the book as a “techno- of the daily life of patients and staff would have mystery” makes it difficult to identify the intended

North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 25 audience. The plot maintains a steady pace, but tribes to have some degree of autonomy and local The book contains maps, black-and-white photos, there are not enough clues to make it a traditional self-governance. The task of the Lumbees was to genealogy charts, and footnotes. I recommend this mystery and, with a few exceptions, not enough convince the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) that well researched and readable book for academic action scenes to make it a thriller. Some sections are they were indeed an autonomous Native American libraries and for libraries with collections on Native written in science fiction style, and slogans such as group set apart from others. The government’s Americans or the Jim Crow South. “Government Without Shame” and “Continuous struggle became one of definition, as the official Improvement With No Change” have Orwellian concept of tribe did not mesh well with the way the Scott Rice overtones. It’s easy to lose interest in why the Lumbee thought of themselves. Into this problem Appalachian State University truck was stolen in the first place as the storyline stepped Arthur Estabrook, a sociologist who had is gradually overwhelmed by vivid portraits of the worked for the Eugenics Records Office of the members of the Colebrook family. Carnegie Institution and had co-authored a book entitled Mongrel Virginians. Estabrook was certain Cow across America The descriptions of covert nuclear power he could resolve these difficulties by providing an Dale Neal. Charlotte: Novello operations, the technology of autonomous aircraft, anthropometric analysis. He administered physical Festival Press, 2009. 220 DC bureaucrats, and the Colebrook family are and mental tests to Lumbees to determine how pp. $21.95. ISBN 978-0- well written, but these disparate threads are woven much “negro blood” was part of their genetic 9815192-3-4. together somewhat clumsily. Nevertheless, the makeup. camaraderie exhibited by the Colebrook family ow across America is appealing and readers familiar with Asheville Segregationists were interested in this genetic interweaves two will be nodding in agreement with the author’s determination for their own purposes, which Clighthearted and depiction of the area. The ending contains a involved exercising power over African humorous tales. The first satisfying twist which serves to make this book a Americans. After African Americans had been is the coming-of-age fun and worthwhile, if slightly disjointed, weekend disfranchised, Democratic politicians in North saga of Dwight Martin. read. Carolina essentially blackmailed the Lumbee into We meet Dwight as he’s voting for them by threatening to cut off support writing his first novel at The Middle of the Air is recommended for libraries for allowing them the vote. At every turn, Native age ten during a boring summer on his grandparent’s that collect North Carolina fiction. American groups had to renegotiate status with farm in Beaverdam, North Carolina. Dwight’s segregationists depending upon the demands story will bring back childhood memories for many Arleen Fields of the moment. The status of groups such as the readers as he learns to whistle, bravely face the world Methodist University Lumbee reflected what segregationists hoped to with a wooden pop gun, struggle awkwardly into gain, whether it was their land, or some further adolescence, watch the unraveling of his parents’ erosion of the rights of African Americans. The marriage, and tolerate the company of doting Lumbee Indians in the Jim Lumbee had to chart their own path through grandparents. Most of the book, though, consists Crow South: Race, Identity, and the dangerous territory of Jim Crow and had to of his Grandpa Wylie’s fantastic and fabulous maintain their difference from African Americans descriptions of a teenage hike to California with his the Making of a Nation in order to secure better treatment. For example, in best friend and a beloved milk cow. Grandpa Wylie the administration of the public schools there was makes Dwight hand over his spare pocket change Malinda Maynor Lowery. to hear each almost-unbelievable installment—a Chapel Hill: University of a constant battle for resources that ranked white North Carolina Press, 2010. 339 schools first, Indian schools second, and schools month of collecting gear for the trip, week after pp. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-8078- that served African American children a distant hungry week of hiking, days of lying injured and 7111-9 (cloth). $21.95. ISBN third. But to get this preferential treatment, the trapped in an old Indian mound, and dramatic (and 978-0807871119 (paper) Lumbees had to accept the racial structure of the impossible?) sagas of crossing the Mississippi River, Jim Crow South, which left all non-white races being swept up in a tornado, and traveling through umbee Indians in vulnerable to more discrimination. a mysterious tunnel under the Grand Canyon. Years the Jim Crow South later, after Grandpa Wylie is gone, Dwight is aware Lpresents the history of of “a lifetime of nickels and dimes traded for all the Lowery’s book is a well-written account of the the Lumbee people in tall tales he’d heard as a boy and secretly measured Lumbee story in these decades. The most interesting the late nineteenth and himself against.” parts of the book were when Lowery would bring early twentieth centuries Beneath the warmth and humor of the intertwined the story down to the personal level by relating and their struggles to define themselves. Malinda tales lie glimpses of the strong bonds between anecdotes concerning her own family history. In her Maynor Lowery describes this struggle as a clash of a growing boy and his grandfather and the life introductory discussion of how the Lumbee refer conflicting forces: the Lumbee and their own ideas lessons our elders can teach us through storytelling. to themselves as “our People,” she relates a story about identity, race, and kinship; the government The themes of growing up, relationships with of how she negotiated a conversation with a local and its concepts of race, tribe, and blood; parents and grandparents, and young boys’ fantastic preacher about her kin to show that she was indeed segregationists and Jim Crow laws and norms; and adventures on the road will make from “around here.” This vividly illustrated the clash Cow across the turmoil caused by whites, blacks and Native appeal to a wide range of readers. Mark between the Lumbee notion of kinship and the America Americans competing for resources in opposition Twain-like humor and wit make the book a good fit difficulties the government had placing this group to the others. Each group tried to secure the best for young adult and adult fiction collections. treatment and most resources for their group, with of people in the appropriate pigeonhole. Malinda Maynor Lowery was born in Robeson County some groups (such as the segregationists) working Dale Neal is a North Carolina native and a and is now an Assistant Professor of History at both to secure their own place and to demote graduate of Wake Forest University and the MFA Harvard University. She has written numerous others. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. articles on the themes of Native American identity He is an avid hiker and mountain biker and a staff and politics in North Carolina and has produced The government’s actions toward the Lumbee writer for the Asheville . three award-winning documentaries about Native Citizen-Times Cow across reflected confusion as to how to recognize this is his first novel and was the winner of the Americans, two of which focus on Lumbee identity America group, particularly in light of New Deal legislation 2009 Novello Literary Award, granted annually and culture. which made it possible for recognized Indian by Novello Festival Press for a book of fiction or

26 North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 creative nonfiction by a North or South Carolina deadening grind of mill work. Cheap used early and the author of The Great Smokies: From Natural writer. Novello Festival Press is the nation’s only model automobiles were becoming available by the Habitat to National Park. A native of Asheville, public library-sponsored literary publisher, and is late 1920s; the faster they could be made to run, he is a late convert to racing fandom. This book an imprint of the Public Library of Charlotte and the more useful they were for delivering product. includes a bibliography, notes, an index, and black- Mecklenburg County. Car races of various types and “Hell Driving” stunt and-white photographs. It is recommended for shows were already popular entertainments. It was academic and public libraries. Dianne Ford only a matter of time before men who risked their Elon University necks bootlegging by night started challenging each Dorothy Hodder other in front of crowds by day. New Hanover County Public Library Real NASCAR: In describing the character of typical stock car racers and their fans, Pierce invokes descriptions 27 Views of Hillsborough: White Lightning, Red Clay, by earlier social historians of the typical white and Big Bill France working-class southern male, the “Hell of a fellow” A Southern Town in Prose & in W.J. Cash’s phrase. Stock car racing perfectly Poetry Daniel S. Pierce. Chapel Hill: satisfies that demographic group’s traditional University of North Carolina affinity for violent physical competition, excessive Michael Malone. Hillsborough, Press, 2010. 348 pp. $30.00. alcohol consumption, unrestrained behavior, and NC: Eno Publishers, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8078-3384-1. 210 pp. $15.95. ISBN 978-0- general braggadocio. The author carries this theme 9820771-2-2. throughout the book, emphasizing the frustrations o book can of outdoorsmen facing modernization and reproduce the urbanization, and particularly the regimentation he back cover blurb N of mill work, to explain their readiness to flock to sheer sensory overload of for 27 Views of the racetracks and regard bootleggers-turned-stock T noise, power, and speed Hillsborough may in fact that NASCAR fans find car drivers as outlaw-heroes. Interestingly, although be the twenty-eighth so addictive, although he traces the history of stock car racing to the view. Frances Mayes— many have been published to feed their obsession early 1970s, Pierce does not explore whether the herself a part-time Hillsborough resident when not between events. Daniel Pierce differentiates his Civil Rights movement and desegregation has any in Tuscany—writes: “If there are hot spots on the bearing on the continuing appeal of the sport to an Real NASCAR from the rest of the pack by basing globe, as the ancients believed, Hillsborough must his chronological history of the founding and early almost exclusively white audience. be one of them. I can’t count the number of historic stages of organized stock car racing on documented markers in the gracious old town. More recently, sources, disqualifying himself from using many As the founder of NASCAR, William Getty some ground force is attracting an astonishing colorful myths and self-promotional anecdotes that “Big Bill” France is pivotal to this history. France number of writers, artists, photographers, and he was unable to verify. The result is an imposing was a racer and mechanic who settled his family musicians . . . Say hello. The natives are friendly.” In record of drivers, cars, promoters, racetracks, racing in Daytona Beach, where he finished fifth in the his introduction, Michael Malone goes so far as to associations, and sponsors that will be useful for town’s first stock car beach/road race in 1936. The state that Hillsborough contains “more novelists, researchers and gratifying for faithful followers, 250-mile event lost $22,000 for Daytona Beach; the poets, essayists, scholars, and historians per even if it moves too slowly to attract new converts scoring system was so complicated that no one was square foot than any other small town since, well, to the track. sure who had won when it was over; and every car Concord, Massachusetts.” in the race had to be towed out of the deep sand on the turns at least once. That could have been the end In his introduction, Pierce addresses two major Despite such observations, 27 Views is no work problems that handicapped his attempt at a of the story, but Bill France began organizing and of chamber of commerce puffery. A mélange of scholarly treatment of NASCAR’s past. First, promoting races and in a few years built Daytona commentary and literary tribute, the “views” NASCAR is a family-owned business that exercises into a successful venue. Soon after World War II, paint a many-faceted, layered portrait of the strict control over its image and refuses access to its he was promoting races throughout the piedmont Orange County seat. Essays, fiction, and poetry archives. Second, he found that while witnesses to South and building a network of racetracks. In range from the earliest Trading Path days to the the birth of the sport might speak frankly about 1948 he founded NASCAR and began picking off end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. their own past illegal activities, they were reticent competing racing associations. He controlled the Voices include whites, African Americans, Native about implicating friends and family members even independent drivers with an often arbitrary iron Americans, southerners, and new arrivals. Entries after the statute of limitations had run out. Although fist, penalizing them for driving in non-NASCAR run the gamut from local color to realism, with the NASCAR downplays the popular belief that early races and other undesirable behavior, and twice emphasis on realism. stock car racers were bootleggers pitting their beating their attempts to unionize with a mixture cars and driving skills against each other, Pierce’s of bullying and concessions. In the 1950s he forged Among those viewing Hillsborough are literary research links not only drivers but also many of the unprecedented partnerships in Detroit that greatly lions (Allan Gurganus, Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, early mechanics, car owners, promoters, and track boosted the visibility and rewards of stock car Randall Kenan, Michael Malone), essayists and owners to the illegal manufacturing and trafficking racing. Pierce’s account of the mixed blessing of journalists (Hal Crowther, Barry Jacobs, John of liquor. It seems likely that the hard drinking corporate sponsorship may be the most revealing Valentine), poets (Jaki Shelton Green, Jeffery Beam, going on before, during, and after the races also part of the story. The author draws the curtain in Mike Troy), a chef (Aaron Vandemark of Panciuto), contributes to the difficulty of documenting some 1972, the beginning of NASCAR’s first Winston a gardener (Nancy Goodwin of Montrose), and a of the sport’s most hair-raising stories. Cup season and the year France turned over the musician (Katharine Whalen of Squirrel Nut reins to his son. Given the lack of access to his Zippers fame). As with any good collection, Pierce sets the stage for the emergence of stock car business records and personal memories, Big Bill themes in some essays resurface in others, and the racing amid struggling small farms in the piedmont unfortunately remains a remote and enigmatic sum is greater than the individual parts. South of the early twentieth century, where making figure to the reader. moonshine was the only way many families found Bob Burtman details the combination of geography to hold on to the land and to avoid the soul- Daniel S. Pierce is chair of the History Department and citizen-assisted good luck that thus far has at the University of North Carolina at Asheville

North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010 27 spared the town from the overdevelopment and observations of neighbors and friends in that German metallurgist hired to investigate minerals homogenization plaguing most of the Triangle. area to discuss their use of permaculture, wild and artifacts. Far more than a book of firsts and Thomas Campanella contrasts China’s frenetic crafting, living off the power grid, and the broader facts, Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina rush into modernity with the development of implications of those actions. He experiences the presents four hundred plus years of Jewish presence Hillsborough’s historic district. Barry Jacobs intrusiveness of a chicken factory, especially when and heritage in North Carolina beginning with describes the colorful North Carolinians, warts the wind is right. “Adams County” is Chatham Gans’s arrival in 1585. Author Leonard Rogoff, and all, who settled Moorefields, just outside of County, and his walks and bicycle rides place Historian for the Jewish Heritage Foundation of town. And Tom Magnuson chronicles the town’s him near Siler City. He also mentions Chatham North Carolina and President of the Southern many names, including Acconeechi, Corbinton, Marketplace and uses Southern Village in Chapel Jewish Historical Society, clearly demonstrates his Childesburg, and Hillsboro/Hillsborough: “And Hill to make some of his points. passion for, and scholarship of, Southern Jewry in so it is today, a Colonial name for a town of this expansive work. Revolutionary fame with streets bearing the names The book is set in a near-Eden of garden, sun-heated of Colonial tyrants of various stripe. History is showers, candle light at night, and wood heat, The book, which is divided into six sections larded with such ironies.” but the region, while a good setting for Powers’ spanning from the colonial period to the Sunbelt musings, is not the real subject of the book. As the era, expertly traces how North Carolina’s first Hillsborough is rightly proud of this affectionate, author lives, takes walks, and visits with neighbors, Jewish families came to settle in small towns contemporary portrait. At a recent event sponsored he considers the distance these people are from the throughout the state, arriving primarily from larger by the Friends of the Orange County Library, mainstream of American life, dependent as it is on cities in South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Hillsborough’s reading public streamed to the new institutions such as the intrusive chicken factory. New York. Communal and fiscal ties with these library, packing the meeting room to capacity and cities remained strong and initially helped anchor leading Barry Jacobs to remark that the program Powers also considers the paradox in his life’s many of the families as merchants in their new was a “nice break from a previous conversation on work helping humanity—at the expense of large environs. Over time, peddlers became shop owners municipal solid waste disposal.” quantities of jet fuel. He begins to reflect on the turned industrialists, scholars, politicians, doctors, lessons he has been helping to teach other cultures, lawyers, or entrepreneurs, all the while connecting Daniel Wallace, whose illustrations graced last and the possibility that he has been encouraging to their communities through patronage, civic September’s North Carolina Literary Festival in the adoption of a lifestyle of overdevelopment in leadership, and activism. Chapel Hill, created the cover art for 27 Views. This societies where enough had been a comfortable book is suitable for all types of libraries, especially goal. His time in the cabin, much of it alone, gives Throughout the book, Rogoff incorporates a those with collections focusing on North Carolina, Powers time to consider his young daughter and thoughtful combination of photographs, oral and should be required reading for anyone within the pain of his separation from her. He comes to a histories, richly drawn personal portraits, and hailing distance of Orange County. It would appeal new appreciation of his life as a parent, seeing it as a archival documents. Each is well placed in the text to adult and older young adult readers. reason to help the world both achieve a sufficiency and helps propel the very detailed and extensive and avoid overdevelopment with its false economies historical narrative to good effect. Acculturation Margaretta Yarborough of vast scale. He wishes for a new “soft world” for his is amply addressed throughout the book and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill child. In the end, he fits into the cabin and feels at interwoven with issues of slavery, anti-Semitism, home in a small space and the world around it. civil rights, and women’s rights. Rogoff does not shy away from the irony of some of newly immigrated Twelve by Twelve: A One Many public libraries will want this thoughtful Jewish southerners turning a blind eye to (or book on the state of the world; it fits into the engaging in) slavery while fighting for their own Room Cabin off the Grid and current stream of literature examining our way of religious and cultural freedoms. But another part beyond the American Dream life. Also, all libraries in the Triangle and, especially of the story is the importance of Jewish activism in Chatham County, will want the book as a picture of advancing civil rights. The process of community William Powers. Novato, CA: our local ways of living. building is a focus of the book, and Rogoff asserts New World Library, 2010. that one of the main challenges for both native and 296 pp. $14.93. ISBN 978-1- Nancy Frazier immigrant North Carolina Jews was “to become 57731-897-2. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill southerners while remaining Jews.”

Leonard Rogoff has taught at North Carolina his book by William Central University and written for The Spectator Powers has some Down Home: T (Raleigh) and The Independent (Durham). He has nice features: a black- Jewish Life in North Carolina also written Homelands: Southern-Jewish Identity and-white watercolor in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina by Hannah Morris at Leonard Rogoff. Chapel published by the University of Alabama Press in the beginning of each Hill: Published in association 2001. part and a tiny sketch of the 12 x 12ft. house that with the Jewish Heritage precedes each wise saying Powers found on pieces Foundation of North Carolina by the University of This scholarly work is highly engaging and would of paper in the house. “About the author” at the North Carolina Press, c2010. prove a welcome addition to high school, public, end is useful and interesting. An appendix with 432 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0- college and university library collections. Of note, resources for further study and an index are features 8078-3375-9. Rogoff directed a documentary of the same title, that will help the reader. bringing to screen many of the oral histories and redited with personal portraits introduced in the book. The author is very active in aid and conservation Cbuilding the first work worldwide. He is well known as the writer scientific laboratory in Winifred Metz of books based on these experiences, such as Blue America (an assayer’s University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Clay People. Twelve by Twelve came out of Powers’ oven in Fort Raleigh), Joachim Gans was also the experiences in a house on “No-Name Creek” in first Jew to step foot in North Carolina. Gans, part “Adams County” North Carolina. He uses his of Sir Walter Raleigh’s second expedition, was a

28 North Carolina Libraries Volume 68, Spring / Summer 2010