Chapel Hill Book

The legend of Teach's Light has been handed down by the people of Stumpy Point village in coastal North Carolina for nearly three centuries. None can say when the mysterious light that hovers above Little Dismal Swamp will next appear, but it is said to guard a store of treasure buried long ago by Edward Teach (c. 1680-1718), better known as the infamous pirate Blackbeard.One summer evening, teenagers Corky Calhoun and Toby Davis row into the swamp, drawn by the mystery of Teach's Light. But their adventure soon takes a curious turn. Thrown back in time by a sudden explosion, Corky and Toby find themselves floating safely above seventeenth-century England, as Blackbeard's life unfolds below. They watch as the orphaned Edward Teach decides to stow away across the Atlantic, begins his career as the fearsome Blackbeard, stages terrible raids from the Caribbean to North Carolina aboard his ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, and, finally, is beheaded in a battle with the British Crown's ships. An inventive blend of history and science fiction, Teach's Light brings Blackbeard's story vividly to life.

Acknowledged as the classic work on North Carolina cuisine, North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery was first published in 1955. This new edition, marking the book's first appearance in paperback, has been revised and updated by the author and includes several dozen new dishes.The book is already a standard reference in many kitchens, both for the wealth of good recipes it presents and for the accompanying information on the distinctive heritage of the state's cooking. Beth Tartan provides recipes for such North Carolina classics as Persimmon Pudding and Sweet Potato Pie. A chapter on Old Salem highlights the cuisine of the Moravian settlement there and offers recipes, including Moravian Sugar Cake, from their famous celebrations.Tartan evokes the time when people ate three meals a day and sat down to a magical Sunday dinner each week. With the advent of boxed mixes and supermarkets, she says, old favorites began to disappear from menus. And in time, so have the cooks whose storehouse of knowledge and skills represent an important link to our past.

In 1937, The Lost Colony, Paul Green's dramatic retelling of the founding and mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Island colony, opened to standing-room-only audiences and rave reviews. Since then, the beloved outdoor drama has played to more than 3 million people, and it is still going strong. Produced by the Roanoke Island Historical Association at the Waterside Theater near Manteo, North Carolina, The Lost Colony has run for more than sixty summers almost without interruption. (Production was suspended during World War II, when the threat of German submarines prowling the coast made an extended blackout necessary.)The model for modern outdoor theater, The Lost Colony combines song, dance, drama, special effects, and music to breathe life into shadowy legend. This rendering of the play's text, edited and with an introduction by Laurence Avery, brings this pioneering work back into print.

For his humanistic religious verse, his poignant and deeply personal antislavery poems, and, above all, his lifelong enthusiasm for liberty, nature, and the art of poetry, George Moses Horton merits a place of distinction among nineteenth-century African American poets. Enslaved from birth until the close of the Civil War, the self-taught Horton was the first American slave to protest his bondage in published verse and the first black man to publish a book in the South. As a man and as a poet, his achievements were extraordinary. In this volume, Joan Sherman collects sixty-two of Horton's poems. Her comprehensive introduction--combining biography, history, cultural commentary, and critical insight--presents a compelling and detailed picture of this remarkable man's life and art.

In 1860, Somerset Place was one of the most successful plantations in North Carolina--and its owner one of the largest slaveholders in the state. More than 300 slaves worked the plantation's fields at the height of its prosperity; but nearly 125 years later, the only remembrance of their lives at Somerset, now a state historic site, was a lonely wooden sign marked "Site of Slave Quarters."Somerset Homecoming, first published in 1989, is the story of one woman's unflagging efforts to recover the history of her ancestors, slaves who had lived and worked at Somerset Place. Traveling down winding southern roads, through county courthouses and state archives, and onto the front porches of people willing to share tales handed down through generations, Dorothy Spruill Redford spent ten years tracing the lives of Somerset's slaves and their descendants. Her endeavors culminated in the joyous, nationally publicized homecoming she organized that brought together more than 2,000 descendants of the plantation's slaves and owners and marked the beginning of a campaign to turn Somerset Place into a remarkable resource for learning about the history of both African Americans and whites in the region.

North Carolina's Paul Green (1894-1981) was part of that remarkable generation of writers who first brought southern writing to the attention of the world. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1927, Green was a restless experimenter who pioneered a new form of theater with his "symphonic drama," The Lost Colony. A concern for human rights characterized both his life and his writing, and his steady advocacy for educational and social reform and racial justice contributed in fundamental ways to the emerging New South in the first half of this century.A Paul Green Reader makes available once again the work of this powerful and engaging writer. It features Green's drama and fiction, with texts of three plays--including the Pulitzer Prize-winning In Abraham's Bosom and the famous second act of The Lost Colony--and six short stories. It also reveals the life behind the work through several of Green's essays and letters and an excerpt from The Wordbook, his collection of regional folklore. Laurence Avery's introduction outlines Green's life and examines the central concerns and techniques of his work. A native of Harnett County, North Carolina, Paul Green was a devoted teacher of philosophy and drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For seventy years, The Natural Gardens of North Carolina has been a must-read volume for anyone interested in wildflowers, native plants, ecology, or conservation in the state. This handsome revised edition features new line drawings and color photographs, an appendix that updates the botanical nomenclature, an introduction that focuses on B. W. Wells and his passion for the state's landscape, and an afterword that discusses the continuing relevance of Wells's ideas. One of the first scientists to write and lecture about ecology, Wells introduced North Carolinians to the extraordinary tapestry of "natural gardens," or plant communities, within the state's borders back in 1932. His purpose was to help readers understand a plant within its community--a pioneering concept at the time--and to promote conservation. Moving from the Atlantic coast westward, Wells identifies eleven major natural gardens: the sand dune community, salt marsh, freshwater marsh, swamp forest, aquatic vegetation, evergreen shrub bog (or pocosin), grass-sedge bog (or savanna), sandhill, old-field community, upland forest, and high mountain spruce-fir forest. He devotes the first part of his book to a general account of the vegetation and habitats of each community and then identifies and describes the wildflowers found there.

In 1928 New York native Muriel Earley Sheppard moved with her mining engineer husband to the Toe River Valley -- an isolated pocket in North Carolina between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountains. Sheppard began visiting her neighbors and forming friendships in remote coves and rocky clearings, and in 1935 her account of life in the mountains -- Cabins in the Laurel -- was published. The book included 128 striking photographs by the well-known Chapel Hill photographer, Bayard Wootten, a frequent visitor to the area. The early reviews of Cabins in the Laurel were overwhelmingly positive, but the mountain people -- Sheppard's friends and subjects -- initially felt that she had portrayed them as too old-fashioned, even backward. As novelist John Ehle shows in his foreword, though, fifty years have made a huge difference, and the people of the Toe River Valley have been among its most affectionate readers. This new large-format edition, which makes use of many of Wootten's original negatives, will introduce Sheppard's words and Wootten's photography to a whole new generation of readers -- in the Valley and beyond.

Back in print A longtime favorite of several generations of Tar Heels, Taffy of Torpedo Junction is the thrilling adventure story of thirteen-year-old Taffy Willis, who, with the help of her pony and dog, exposes a ring of Nazi spies operating from a secluded house on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, during World War II. For readers of all ages, the book brings to life the dramatic wartime events on the Outer Banks, where German U-boats turned an area around Cape Hatteras into 'Torpedo Junction' by sinking more than sixty American vessels in just a six-month period in 1942. Taffy has been enjoyed by young and old alike since it was first published in 1957.

Through the Garden Gate is a collection of 144 of the popular weekly articles that Elizabeth Lawrence wrote for The Charlotte Observer from 1957 to 1971. With those columns, a delightful blend of gardening lore, horticultural expertise, and personal adventures, Lawrence inspired thousands of southern gardeners.

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America's most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990.

Originally published in 1984, Senator Ervin's delightful collection of stories and anecdotes winds its way from his native Morganton through Chapel Hill and Harvard, the military, the North Carolina Supreme Court, the United States Senate, and Watergate. It represents a lifetime of wit and wisdom--told in the late Senator Ervin's inimitable style.

Over 400 recipes for pickles, preserves, relishes, conserves, jellies, marmalades, chutneys, jams, fruit butters, pickled meats, mincemeats, ketchups, sauces, and candied fruits. "The conservation of food by pickling and preserving is an old and honorable art," writes Marion Brown in her introduction to Pickles and Preserves, first published in 1955. While the art of food preservation does indeed have a long history, it is also very much in step with contemporary interest in natural foods and home gardening. As the popularity of farmers' markets, natural food stores, and garden-to-table cookbooks attests, Americans are once again hungry for the taste of authentic home cooking. With its heirloom recipes and clear instructions, Pickles and Preserves introduces the modern cook to a wonderful piece of America's culinary heritage. The book's 408 recipes not only cover pickles and preserves but also relishes, conserves, jellies, marmalades, chutneys, jams, fruit butters, pickled meats, mincemeats, ketchups, sauces, and candied fruits. Many of the recipes are surprisingly quick and simple. Many are for special delicacies to be savored with a holiday meal or given as gifts. Damon Fowler's new foreword expands and updates Brown's notes on preserving methods, equipment, and safety. The book will be useful to canners of all levels of experience.