At long last over 200 titles of the newest additions to the North Carolina Collection are now listed on our “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” page. Make sure to peruse the list for 10 new titles of poetry, 23 new autobiographies and bibliographies, over 40 new works of fiction and much more. So if you are looking for a great recipe to wow your friends at your next barbecue (Dan Huntley, Lisa Grace Lednicer, and Layne Bailey: Extreme Barbeque: Smokin’ Rigs and Real Good Recipes), trying to decide where to take the family for the weekend (Jim Hoffman: Fun with the Family North Carolina: Hundreds of Ideas for Day Trips with the Kids) or the dog (Karen Chavez: Best Hikes with Dogs), or just looking to catch up on your North Carolina photographic history (Kevin Adams: North Carolina Then and Now), then this is one list you’ll want to check out. To see the full list simply click on the link in this entry or click on the “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” link under the heading “Pages” in the right column. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library Catalog and they are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room.

Our recent posting concerning the Bostic Lincoln Center Museum and its claim that Abraham Lincoln was born in North Carolina created quite the furor, especially among some Kentuckians who monitor this blog. Well, a new book by author Kevin Duffus may cause a similar outbreak. In The Last Days of Blackbeard the Pirate, Duffus claims that the infamous pirate was born in North Carolina, not Bristol, England.

Read more about this and other claims from the forthcoming book in this Raleigh News and Observer article.

I’ve been catching up on the new additions to the North Carolina Collection and today I added over 200 more titles to our “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” page. To be more exact, today’s list has 217 new titles, including more than 50 books of poetry, 35 works of fiction, 11 biographies, two books on North Carolina’s wild horses, and nifty foreign language editions of Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain in Polish), Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster in French), Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby in German), and Jim Grimsley (Comfort and Joy in German). Check out the full list by clicking on the link in this entry or by clicking on the “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” link under the heading “Pages” in the right column. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library catalog and they are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room.

Late last week I added more than 100 new titles to our “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” page. This listing of the North Carolina Collection’s latest selections is updated several times a year and you can check it out by clicking on the link under the heading “Pages” in the right column. Full citations for all these new books can be found in the University Library catalog and they are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room. Enjoy!

The North Carolina Collection recently received as a gift the sewing model book created by Helen Bales when she was student at the Home Industrial School in Asheville in 1898-1899. Helen was studying to be a teacher at a time when it was expected that common schools would teach young girls how to sew.

Miss Bales had to demonstrate that she could teach over a dozen types of stitching. Her samples are presented one to a page. On the facing page is a handwritten explanation of the materials employed and the likely uses of the stitching style. Some pages also include verses to read to the children as they stitch. Here is one such verse imposed on the model for an apron:

Helen Bales’ excellent model book was graded at 95%. After finishing her education, Helen Bales married Bruce Slaughter and taught school in Robbinsville, Graham County, North Carolina.

The North Carolina Collection got an early Christmas present this year when two friends of the collection, Snow and Ben Roberts, brought us a copy of Don’t Buy Me Any Green Bananas. I have been looking for this book for at least a decade. As a coach at Wake Forest (1958-1965) and with the ABA Carolina Cougars (1969-1971), McKinney was known for his colorful personality and showmanship. He channels that same zaniness in this collection of his newspaper columns as he expounds on such topics as traveling with family, personal ads by senior citizens, and ticket distribution for NCAA tournament games.

As was mentioned in an earlier post, the North Carolina Collection Gallery was included in the new book North Carolina Curiosities. Sadly, not even the presence of a copy of Napoleon’s death mask was enough to get the Gallery included in Roger Manley’s, Weird Carolinas. Maybe because Manley’s book includes both Carolinas, the competition was just too great.

Despite this snub to our great Gallery, the University here at Chapel Hill did merit inclusion in Weird Carolinas. Like so many other people, Manley was taken by the story of the unsuccessful UNC applicant Peter Dromgoole and the secret society that built its meeting place, Gimghoul Castle on the site of his fatal duel.

It’s that time again and I’ve just added over 200 titles to our What’s New in the North Carolina Collection page. This list is updated four times a year with our latest selections. Full citations can be found in the University Library catalog and these items are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room. Check out the list under Pages in the right column.

Yesterday’s News & Observer had a long article about the auction of the North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham, once one of the premier stops on the NASCAR circuit. The article is a nice complement to the new book, Silent Speedways of the Carolinas by Perry Allen Wood. Wood’s book offers extensive histories of twenty-nine former tracks in North and South Carolina. The book is thoroughly researched, and illustrated with black and white photographs. Just paging through the images, these former sites of racing glory all seem to look alike — to any but the most careful observer, they would appear as little more than overgrown vacant lots.

Just as the nation was embarking on the the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, North Carolinians were reminded of the conflicts, hot and cold, of an earlier era. Charles Robert Jenkins, a soldier from Rich Square, North Carolina, disappeared while patrolling the DMZ in Korea in 1965. Nothing was heard of him again until 2002 when his Japanese wife and four other Japanese kidnapped by the North Koreans were allowed to visit their homeland. Jenkins did not accompany his wife, in part because the North Koreans were using him and their two daughters as hostages to force Mrs. Jenkins to return, but also because Jenkins feared extradition to the United States to face a court-martial.

The case of the Jenkins family became a cause célèbre in Japan, where there was much sympathy for Mrs. Jenkins. North Carolinians were not of one mind on Mr. Jenkins. Was he a deserter, or someone victimized by the North Koreans–or both? Two years of media attention and diplomatic activity produced a resolution. Mr. Jenkins went to an American base in Japan and admitted to a court-martial that he deserted because he feared being sent to Vietnam. The court showed mercy, giving Jenkins a short sentence. He and his family retired to his wife’s hometown in Japan where Jenkins wrote his autobiography, which was published in Japan in 2005. The North Carolina Collection now has a copy of that work, Kokuhaku=To Tell the Truth. If you can’t read Japanese, check back in 2008, when the University of California Press will be publishing an English language edition of the autobiography under the title The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.