Blair

Nearly two million people visit Gettysburg National Military Park annually, but most of those visitors possess only a rudimentary knowledge of the battle and restrict their travel to the well-established tourist routes. Few know the stories behind the monuments that dot the battlefield, but those back stories are often as fascinating as the story of the battle itself. In their award-winning So You Think You Know Gettysburg?, the Gindlespergers had to make difficult decisions when deciding which of the 200 sites out of the 1,300 battlefield monuments to include. At their frequent book signings in Gettysburg, customers were asking them for a second volume so visitors could learn even more about the monuments throughout the park. In So You Think You Know Gettysburg? Volume Two, the Gindlespergers have expounded on the histories of an additional 200+ park attractions. The area maps and 270+ color photographs make this guide a welcome addition for the park visitor or the armchair traveler.

JAMES AND SUZANNE GINDLESPERGER are members of the Friends of Gettysburg Foundation, the Save Historic Antietam Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Civil War Preservation Trust. Suzanne is a cofounder of Pennwriters, a professional organization for published and aspiring authors. James is the author of three previous Civil War books. The couple lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Across the Blue Ridge Mountains stretches a world both charming and complicated.

Jeremy Jones and his wife move into a small house above the creek where his family had settled 200 years prior. He takes a job alongside his former teachers in the local elementary school and sets out on a search to understand how this ancient land has shaped its people—how it shaped him. His search sends him burrowing in the past—hunting buried treasure and POW camps, unearthing Civil War graves and family feuds, exploring gated communities and tourist traps, encountering changed accents and immigrant populations, tracing both Walmart sidewalks and carved-out mountains—and pondering the future. He meshes narrative and myth, geology and genealogy, fiddle tunes and local color in his exploration of the briskly changing and oft-stigmatized world of his native southern Appalachians and particularly the mystical Bearwallow Mountain, a peak suddenly in flux.

While working as a reporter and producer for North Carolina’s public television network, Bob Garner took his “love of good food to work” where he created a weekly program devoted to the state’s barbecue culture. That evolved into several programs about traditional cooking. Over the course of his many years with UNC-TV, Garner established himself as a country-cooking connoisseur and viewers came to love his trademark “mmm-mmm” whenever he tasted a dish that met his standards. In Foods that Make You Say Mmm-mmm, Garner discusses such signature North Carolina dishes as Brunswick stew, livermush, calabash-style fish, Moravian chicken pie, persimmon pudding, fish stew, and scuppernong grapes. Each chapter provides historical background, recipes and preparation tips, and listings of the best venues where the readers can sample for themselves. In addition to the classic dishes, sidebars about favorite brand-name food and beverages, including Krispy Kreme donuts, Texas Pete hot sauce, Cheerwine, and Mt. Olive pickles, are interspersed throughout the book.

Television personality, restaurant reviewer, speaker, author, pit master, and connoisseur of North Carolina barbecue, Bob Garner is the author of two previous books about barbecue. He has written extensively for Our State magazine, including “Bob Garner Eats,” a 10-part series on traditional Southern foods. He has appeared on the Food Network’s Paula’s Home Cookin’ featuring Paula Deen, and Food Nation with Bobby Flay; the Travel Channel’s Road Trip; and ABC’s Good Morning America. Garner was executive producer and host of the UNC-TV series Carolina Countryside and has been a featured speaker at the annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York and the Southern Foodway Alliance’s annual symposium in Oxford, Mississippi. He speaks frequently to a wide variety of audiences across North Carolina. In 2011, Garner joined with Empire Properties in Raleigh, North Carolina, to work with Ed Mitchell at The Pit to promote barbecue heritage; plans include traveling across the state to host heritage dinners and pig pickings, accompanied by live bluegrass music. Garner divides his time between Burlington and Raleigh, North Carolina.

John F. Blair, Publisher, continues its Real Voices, Real History™ series with Voices from the Outer Banks. This volume presents the actual words of the people who lived the uncommonly rich history of this chain of barrier islands stretching from the Virginia border southward through Cape Lookout. Readers will enjoy contemporary accounts of the first British settlement in North America and the birth of the first English child on American soil. They’ll read 18th-century letters, articles, and poems about the bloody death of Blackbeard, arguably the most famous of all the pirates. They’ll read the news account of the first powered airplane flights in human history. And the editorial that created America’s first national seashore. And the words of family members who once inhabited the nation’s most iconic lighthouse—part of a matched set of four. Topics include “the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” in a nod to the rough waters that over the centuries have claimed hundreds of vessels, and “Torpedo Junction,” site of “the Great American Turkey Shoot,” the latter nickname bestowed by German submariners during World War II. The volume includes first-person accounts of Civil War battles, a freedmen’s colony, hunt clubs that drew the first wealthy tourists, and lifesavers who used horses to pull surfboats to the water and fired lines by cannon to wrecked vessels. Readers will even hear contemporary stories of the Boy Scout troop that rode ponies descended from ancient shipwrecked animals.

Stephen Kirk was an editor at John F. Blair, Publisher, for 27 years. He has a B.A. from St. Lawrence University and an M.F.A. from UNC-Greensboro. A story he wrote while working on his M.F.A. appeared in the Greensboro Review and was subsequently selected by John Updike for reprinting in the Best American Short Stories series. Since then, he has written First in Flight: The Wright Brothers in North Carolina and Scribblers: Stalking the Authors of Appalachia. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"More often, however, Kirk wisely lets his “Voices” do the talking. The result is a pocket volume which should make old Banks hands feel nostalgic and strangers want to go." - Ben Steelman Star News Online

In the introduction to Soul Food Odyssey, Chef Stephanie Tyson describes her early feelings when people assumed her Sweet Potatoes restaurant was a “soul food” establishment. “Soul food was like the boxer George Foreman,” she says. “He would stand there and go toe-to-toe. It wasn’t pretty, but he got the job done, and you’d be on your butt. Southern food, on the other hand, was like Muhammad Ali—a little prettier, and you’d still be on your butt! I wanted Ali. I missed the connection that they were both great fighters. Once I got off my high horse, I wanted to know, from a culinary point of view, how do you make what is essentially castaway food into a ‘cuisine’?” In Soul Food Odyssey, Tyson takes readers along on her journey back to find the food her grandmother called “sumntaeat.” The recipes she shares include how to cook various parts of the pig from “the router to the tooter”; other meat dishes, including everything from stewed turkey wings and pot roast to a Low Country boil; what Tyson calls “stone soul sides,” including crackling cornbread, hoecakes, and, of course, different kinds of greens; soups and stews including oxtail and fish head stew and “Everything in It Vegetable Soup”; and desserts “to sell your soul for.” Along with the recipes come Tyson’s comments, which reflect her biting wit as well as her deep appreciation of the food she has come to embrace.

Stephanie L. Tyson is a creative chef who has turned growing up in the South into the soul of her restaurant, Sweet Potatoes. Born in North Carolina, Tyson spent countless hours dreaming of the bright lights of anywhere else. But once she left to travel and cook around the world, she could not believe what a relief it was to come home again. Trained in culinary arts at Baltimore International College, Chef Tyson opened her award-winning restaurant with her partner, Vivián Joiner, in 2003 in the downtown Arts District of Winston-Salem, where they live.

The Drunken Spelunker’s Guide to Plato is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. In this novel, the Cave is a dank basement bar in the small Southern town of Waterville, overflowing with cheap beer, good blues, and local oddballs. There’s Vera, the tough but tender owner; Pancho, the philosophical piano tuner; Billy Joe, the former rising star back home after a stop in Memphis; and Commie Tom, the exceedingly generous proprietor of the Hammer and Sickle Bookstore. The newest bartender is whip-smart tomboy Josie, who hopped a bus from the Appalachian backwoods on a quest to discover who she is and where she belongs. What she finds is the Cave and the love of a charming regular named Danny. Armed with lessons from mythology and Plato’s philosophy, Josie navigates the ups and downs of first love and begins to understand that something much greater is waiting for her just outside the Cave. With Josie as our brave guide, we are submerged in a rarely explored subculture. Her journey into the Cave and back out is filled with trials and tragedy, but Josie is helped along by her newfound community of large-hearted hard drinkers. The Drunken Spelunker’s Guide to Plato is a love letter to the families we build for ourselves and the unexpected ways life can answer the question, "What if?"

KATHY GIUFFRE is a professor and sociologist specializing in social networks, cultural sociology, and Polynesian society. Giuffre was invited to present a TED Talk about her research in 2013. She is the author of a memoir, An Afternoon in Summer: My Year in the South Seas (Awa Press, 2010), as well as two academic books covering her areas of expertise. Giuffre received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from Harvard University. Currently, she and her family live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she is the A.E. and Ethel Irene Carlton Professor of Social Sciences at Colorado College.

". . . [A] novel of love and life that is humorous and delicate. The regulars at the Cavern Tavern in the small southern town of Waterville, located somewhere in the Appalachian Piedmont, partake of all the quirkiness expected of literary denizens of dive bars in the South . . . Passages drawn from Plato's allegory of the cave and Edith Hamilton's Mythology weave through the story, elevating Josie's struggles to the level of the universal. This is warm, sweet, and inviting, like pie fresh from the oven." — Publishers Weekly

"A young woman living in a college town in the early 1990s learns about life, love, and ancient Greek philosophy in this episodic, often comic tale. With its evenhanded narrator, this low-key novel succinctly evokes the supportive dynamics of the community at its heart." — Kirkus Reviews

• Winner: SIBA Summer 2015 Okra Pick Best Book
• Winner: Seven Sisters Book Award, Fiction
• Long List: Pat Conroy Award for Southern Fiction, Prince of Tides Award in Literary Fiction
• Long List: Crook's Corner Book Prize
• Finalist: Foreword INDIEFAB Book of the Year, Literary Fiction

Boasting more craft breweries than any other state in the South, North Carolina is the state of Southern beer. In 2012, Erik Lars Myers wrote North Carolina Craft Beer & Breweries, which profiled 45 breweries. Since then, the number of breweries has more than tripled to over 140 and is still growing. Now, Myers and his wife, Sarah H. Ficke, have produced an expanded and updated second edition.

As in the first edition, Myers and Ficke relate the story of each brewery, profiling the brewers as well as the establishment’s history and the vision of its founders. They also provide details such as location, contact information, and hours of operation. What one reviewer called “an indispensable regional beer handbook” is back and better than ever, offering the ideal introduction for people learning about craft beer and a great resource for enthusiasts who want to get the most out of their craft beer experience.

Erik Lars Myers is the president of the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild and the founder, CEO, and head brewer at Mystery Brewing Company in Hillsborough, NC. Sarah H. Ficke received her PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an assistant professor in the Department of Literature and Languages at Marymount University in Arlington, VA. In 2011, she put her academic research skills to work uncovering the history of brewing in the Tar Heel State for the first edition of North Carolina Craft Beer & Breweries. They live in Durham, NC.

"Myers is a tour guide we can trust"—Beer Advocate

"There may be no more devoted and jovial Pied Piper for beer than Erik Lars Myers, and North Carolina is lucky to have him. His barnstorming book is not only a touring essential for the state, but also a perfect reflection and manifestation of his attitude, vision, investment and energy for the craft."—All About Beer Magazine

Nick Wolf is a public research specialist for NorthAm Oil Company, but he likes to think of himself as the company storyteller. Nick, who believes in the old-fashioned integrity of the people who run NorthAm, is sent to scout potential oil exploration/drilling sites to assess the political climate. His latest assignment sends him to Hatteras Island, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Growing up, Nick’s grandmother used to whisper the name of the island “like a hissing curse that shouldn’t be spoken out loud.” Nick’s grandfather was said to have died on Hatteras during World War II, though he was mysteriously claimed as a fallen soldier by both the American and German armies. As soon as he arrives on the island, Nick is the victim of several suspicious accidents and begins receiving cryptic notes that lead him to surprising revelations about his grandfather. In the course of his research for NorthAm, Nick discovers that four families run everything and everyone is somehow connected. Even Julia Royal, the fascinating and frustrating woman who runs the boarding house where Nick is staying, is the granddaughter of perhaps the most powerful patriarch of the four families—Liam Royal, known as The Founder.

This mystery/thriller follows two intriguing storylines. Contemporary politics of the Outer Banks, including the always-controversial question of offshore drilling, interweave with the history of German saboteurs during World War II. The book’s title—The Dark of the Island—is what the old-timers on Hatteras called a moonless night with no stars. It was on these nights that the “mooncussers and wreckers” would raise a false light on the beach luring an unwary ship’s captain to run aground so the locals could row out to the wreck and loot the cargo. In this novel, it’s Nick Wolf’s destiny to discover what is behind the true “dark of the island.”

Philip Gerard is the author of five novels and eight books of nonfiction, including Down the Wild Cape Fear: A River Journey Through the Heart of North Carolina and The Patron Saint of Dreams, winner of the 2012 North American Gold Medal in Essay/Creative Nonfiction from The Independent Publisher.

"Greed, regret, deceit, and betrayals drive the mystery, but Gerard’s addition of a realistic love story and his literary, often emotionally charged, writing make this a worthwhile read." —Foreword Reviews

In this third edition of his classic photography/ hiking guide, Adams showcases his own beautiful color photographs. This complete compendium lists 1,000 waterfalls, and Adams specifically highlights more than 300 of the best waterfalls found in North Carolina with full descriptions, comprehensive directions, and four-color photographs. Since the first edition of Kevin Adams’s North Carolina Waterfalls in 1994, this book has sold almost 65,000 copies. In that time, Adams has established a widespread and well-respected reputation as a photographer, naturalist, writer, and teacher.

From its comprehensive coverage and detailed trail directions, to its helpful photography tips and beauty ratings, the new North Carolina Waterfalls remains the definitive guide to its subject.

In addition to North Carolina Waterfalls, Kevin Adams is the author of seven additional books and their numerous revisions. He has taught nature photography seminars since the early 1990s and leads popular tours in the N.C. mountains to photograph waterfalls. He is the man behind Digital After Dark blog and the free Night Photography News e-newsletter. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina.

"Readers will appreciate Adams’ comprehensive coverage, his concise driving and hiking directions, his helpful photography tips, and his emphasis on stewardship of natural resources. North Carolina Waterfalls remains the definitive guide for its subject and a must-have for nature loving natives and visitors."—Internet Brothers: Meanderthals Hiking Blog

Five thousand years out of the labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.

Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction, he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch “Neil Gaiman Presents” for Audible.com. A prolific painter and nascent musician, Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona.

" . . . [W]ry, melancholy, beautiful first novel . . . " —The Guardian

"Sherrill's narrative, with its dreamlike pace, shows myth coexisting with reality as naturally as it does in ancient epic." —Publishers Weekly

"Wise and ingenious" —The New York Times

Most Americans have heard of Arlington National Cemetery, yet many of those interred rest in obscurity. This book seeks to honor their memories by telling the stories of 250 people buried here. Many were battlefield heroes, but some survived war to go on to major accomplishments. There are also stories of the original inhabitants of the cemetery, slaves and freedmen who worked on the Lee estate. In addition, the book covers popular sites such as the Tomb of the Unknowns and President Kennedy’s gravesite.

Navigating Arlington can be frustrating for visitors. Searching for a particular section of the cemetery is impractical without a map, and locating a specific grave within a section can lead to expenditure of significant time and energy. To aid visitors, a series of maps presents logical starting points. There is a GPS coordinate for each gravesite, which combines with the cemetery’s smart phone application to make location simple. The description of each site is accompanied by a color photograph.

James Gindlesperger is the author of several books about the Civil War: Escape from Libby Prison, Seed Corn of the Confederacy, and Fire on the Water. He and his wife also co-authored So You Think You Know Gettysburg? and So You Think You Know Antietam?, which were both honored as Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year finalists in the travel category. They live in Johnstown, PA.

" . . . James Gindlesperger offers a beautiful tribute . . . Arlington: A Color Guide to America’s Most Famous Cemetery is a must read for anyone interested in Arlington National Cemetery and the intriguing stories of some who are interred there." -David D. Haught, Military Review

In the tradition of The Stranger and The Old Man and the Sea, this masterful novella by critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith explores the human spirit and its capacity for faith and forgiveness in an imperfect world and begs the question: how do you survive when hope is lost? Jon and Estelle walk the picturesque Paris streets but are living through the cruelest of realities: the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter, Jennifer, abducted from the Musee d’Orsay during a class field trip. Jon spends his days slugging through bus terminals and metro halls, posting flyers of his daughter, while Estelle has become a recluse, unwilling to leave the apartment in case the telephone rings. Their relationship suffers as the passing time chips away at the hope of Jennifer’s return. Then, a free-spirited artist enters their lives as unexpectedly as Jennifer has left it, luring Jon down a reckless path as he searches desperately for courage in the smallest signs. If their daughter is ever returned to them, will Jon and Estelle both be there to welcome her home?

Although legal spirits in the Tar Heel state only go back about ten years, making liquor in North Carolina is not new. Wilkes County, which was once dubbed the “Moonshine Capital of the World,” was the leading producer of illegal liquor for decades. In 1965, Tom Wolfe’s article in Esquire—“The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!”—made the area nationally famous.

Today descendants of famous moonshiners are now respectable craft distillers carrying on the family tradition—people like Brian Call, the master distiller at Call Family Distillers, who is descended from Reverend Daniel Call, who sold his still seven generations ago to burgeoning entrepreneur Jack Daniels. Brian is the son of the legendary Willie Clay “The Uncatchable” Call, who hung around with Junior Johnson and whose favorite car—a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker fitted with toggle switches that kill the brake lights, is on display at the distillery today. Today, the Calls make a 101-proof sour mash moonshine as well as strawberry, cherry, and apple pie varieties.

In Still & Barrel, Trump traces the history of manufacturing moonshine whiskey, gin, vodka, and rum in the state all the way to today’s boom from the artisan movement. The book also serves as a guide so you can visit the almost 50 distilleries that are now in business. The state’s distillers are not just making moonshine. Their wares include rum—from sorghum and molasses—aged red-wheat organic whiskey and vodka infused with the mysterious Tobago pepper. The information about the distillers and their products is surrounded by history and compelling stories about people and their passion.

A lifelong newspaper reporter & editor in NC, Trump received an MFA in narrative nonfiction from Goucher College. His thesis, which told the stories and profiles of North Carolina’s craft distilleries, evolved into a regular Huffington Post/i> blog focused on the subject. That blog was the impetus for Still & Barrel.

This richly illustrated book tells the story of the successful collaboration of Jacques and Juliana Royster Busbee in the creation of a remarkable folkcraft enterprise called Jugtown. This improbable venture, founded in a most unlikely setting, has left its indelible mark on a remote Southern community.

Fully illustrated with numerous black-and-white and color photographs of the place, the people who made pottery there, and the pottery produced by them, the book tells how the Busbees convinced a few of rural Moore County’s old-time utilitarian potters to make new-fangled wares for them to sell in Juliana’s Greenwich Village tea room and shop. Following New Yorkers’ wild acceptance of their primitive-looking and alluring pottery offerings, the Busbees built their own workshop in rural Moore County and called it Jugtown. Today, nearly one hundred potters make and sell their wares within a few miles of Jugtown—all because a hundred years ago, the Busbees and their Jugtown potters found a new way to make old jugs.

Stephen C. Compton is an independent scholar and an avid collector of historic, traditional North Carolina pottery. Steve has written numerous articles and books about the state’s pottery. Widely recognized for his North Carolina pottery expertise, the author is frequently called upon as a lecturer and exhibit consultant and curator. He has served as president of the North Carolina Pottery Center, a museum and educational center located in Seagrove, North Carolina, and is a founding organizer, and former president, of the North Carolina Pottery Collectors’ Guild.

Since its creation in 1934, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has become the most heavily visited of all our national parks, with yearly visitation sometimes surpassing 10 million people. As the national park system celebrated its centennial in 2016, Ben Anderson decided to explore and closely observe, across the seasons, as much of the nation’s most popular national park as practicable during the year. On the three or four hikes he took each month, he revisited a number of trails familiar to him from previous excursions as a Smokies backcountry volunteer for more than 20 years.

To many, the Smokies are among the loveliest and most interesting mountains anywhere, favored by a remarkable biodiversity. Anderson offers observations on natural and human history, mountain culture, geography, geology, flora and fauna. The book also deftly blends the personal with the universal in a compelling mix of entries from the backcountry. Although this book can be used as a helpful trail guide, it also provides a fresh look and an engaging narrative about our most heavily visited national park through the eyes and ears of a lifelong devotee.

Ben Anderson was media relations director at Warren Wilson College from 1997 to 2015. Before that he was assistant professor of mass communications at Florida Southern College. He worked on the staffs of The Asheville Times, the Waynesville Mountaineer, Greensboro News & Record, Athens Banner-Herald, Atlanta Journal, and Athens Daily News. He has been a backcountry volunteer for Great Smoky Mountains National Park for more than 20 years. He now does marketing and public relations work for the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation in Asheville. A native of Atlanta, he lives in Asheville, NC.

"For those who want a more strenuous experience, this book will probably spark the desire to lace up the hiking boots and head deep into the backcountry. At the very least, the book should provide a deeper appreciation for the exceptional beauty and biodiversity in this distinctive national treasure." —WNC Woman