The nail-biting account of the Wright brothers' secret flights at Kitty Hawk and their unexpected rise to fameDespite their great achievements following their first powered flights in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright still enjoyed virtual anonymity until 1908. In seven crucial days in May of that year, however, the eyes of the world were suddenly cast upon them as they sought lucrative government contracts for their flying technology and then had to prove the capabil...

Standing along the coast of today’s Outer Banks, it can be hard to envision the barrier island world at Kitty Hawk as it appeared to Wilbur and Orville Wright when they first arrived in 1900 to begin their famous experiments leading to the world’s first powered flight three years later. Around 1903, the islands and inland seas of North Carolina’s coast were distinctive maritime realms — seemingly at the ends of the earth. But as the Wrights soon recognized, the region was far more develope...

These essays pose new questions concerning the social and political origins of the Revolution in the South, the social disorder indiced by the war, and the impact of the conflict and its ideologies on blacks and women. Contributors are: Pauline Maier, Robert M. Weir, Jack P. Greene, Marvin L. Michale Kay, Lorin Lee Cary, John Shy, Clyde R. Ferguson, Mary Beth Norton, Michael Mullin, and Peter H. Wood.Originally published in 1978.A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Endu...

New Voyages to Carolina offers a bold new approach for understanding and telling North Carolina’s history. Recognizing the need for such a fresh approach and reflecting a generation of recent scholarship, eighteen distinguished authors have sculpted a broad, inclusive narrative of the state’s evolution over more than four centuries. The volume provides new lenses and provocative possibilities for reimagining the state’s past. Transcending traditional markers of wars and elections,...

Writing North Carolina History is the first book to assess fully the historical literature of North Carolina. It combines the talents and insights of eight noted scholars of state and southern history: William S. Powell, Alan D. Watson, Robert M. Calhoon, Harry L. Watson, Sarah M. Lemmon, and H. G. Jones. Their essays are arranged in chronological order from the founding of the first English colony in North America in 1585 to the present.Traditionally North Carolina has no...