Turn on a switch and from the nearest bulb out pours light from... somewhere; turn on a faucet and water appears. Wires, pipes, and roads support the lives we lead, but the average person doesn't know where they go or even how they work. In On the Grid, Scott Huler takes the time to understand the systems that sustain our way of life, starting from his own quarter of an acre in North Carolina and traveling as far as ancient Rome.Each chapter follows one element of infrastr...

In 1700, a young man named John Lawson left London and landed in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to make a name for himself. For reasons unknown, he soon undertook a two-month journey through the still-mysterious Carolina backcountry. His travels yielded A New Voyage to Carolina in 1709, one of the most significant early American travel narratives, rich with observations about the region’s environment and Indigenous people. Lawson later helped found North Carolina’s first two c...

When NPR contributor Scott Huler made one more attempt to get through James Joyce’s Ulysses, he had no idea it would launch an obsession with the book’s inspiration: the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey and the lonely homebound journey of its Everyman hero, Odysseus.No-Man’s Lands is Huler’s funny and touching exploration of the life lessons embedded within The Odyssey, a legendary tale of wandering and longing that could be read as a veritable gui...

“Nature, rightly questioned, never lies.” —A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, Third Edition, 1859Scott Huler was working as a copy editor for a small publisher when he stumbled across the Beaufort Wind Scale in his Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary. It was one of those moments of discovery that writers live for. Written centuries ago, its 110 words launched Huler on a remarkable journey over land and sea into a fascinating world of explorers, mariners, scientists, and writers. Aft...

Best Creative Nonfiction of the South serves as a valuable resource for scholars, students, writers, and general readers interested in creative nonfiction both from specific areas of the South and across the region as a whole. This North Carolina volume, second in the series, contains essays that celebrate and document the Tar Heel state’s diverse cultures and geography, from the mountains to the sea. The writers included here come from diverse backgrounds, generations, and artist...