Comments on: The Six Most Influential Books in Telling North Carolina’s History…Discuss!

By: Cecelia Moore

Cecelia Moore — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 13:07:20 +0000

I’d include the chapter on North Carolina, “Progressive Plutocracy” in V.O. Key’s Southern Politics.

By: Kevin Cherry

Kevin Cherry — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:41:30 +0000

Why do we have to limit to six? Why not ten?

I’m a “both and” kind of guy. Or as Wolfe once said, “I’m a putter-inner not a taker-outer.”

By: Eileen McGrath

Eileen McGrath — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:40:26 +0000

Out with Wolfe, in with Rose Hill by Reed Wolcott or Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls by Victoria Byerly. These books have not been influential but should be since they capture life as lived by ordinary people.

By: Annette Cox

Annette Cox — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:59:24 +0000

How about something on business–Durden on the Dukes or Beatty on the Holts of Alamance County?

By: Nick Graham

Nick Graham — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:05:14 +0000

I’d also ditch Look Homeward, Angel in favor of something that addressed the dramatic changes, both political and cultural, in the second half of the 20th century in North Carolina. Maybe William Snider’s book about the 1984 Helms-Hunt senate race?

By: Michael Hill

Michael Hill — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:11:51 +0000

I’d boot Thomas Wolfe’s novel and replace it with W. J. Cash’s Mind of the South. My argument would be that, in this case, truth trumps fiction. Both writers depict the western region of the early 20th c. in similarly bleak terms.