In this history of the stock car racing circuit known as NASCAR, Daniel S. Pierce offers a revealing new look at the sport from its postwar beginnings on Daytona Beach and Piedmont dirt tracks through the early 1970s, when the sport spread beyond its southern roots and gained national recognition. Real NASCAR not only confirms the popular notion of NASCAR’s origins in bootlegging, but also establishes beyond a doubt the close ties between organized racing and the illegal liquor in...

“The outlandish stories of the antics of early stock car racers immediately attracted me. Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall hauling liquor from Dawsonville to Atlanta one night and winning races the next day in the same car; Fonty Flock winning the Southern 500 wearing Bermuda shorts and argyle socks; his brother Tim racing with a monkey—named Jocko Flocko—in his racecar.”This article appears in the Winter 2012 issue of Southern Cultures. The full issue is also available as an ebook...

From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina boasted some of the nation’s most restrictive laws on alcohol production and sale. For much of this era, it was also the nation’s leading producer of bootleg liquor. Over the years, written accounts, popular songs, and Hollywood movies have turned the state’s moonshiners, fast cars, and frustrated Feds into legends. But in Tar Heel Lightnin', Daniel S. Pierce tells the real history of moonshine in North Carolina ...

Seeking a taste of unspoiled wilderness, more than eight million people visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park each year. Yet few probably realize what makes the park unusual: it was the result of efforts to reclaim wilderness rather than to protect undeveloped land.The Smokies have, in fact, been a human habitat for 8,000 years, and that contact has molded the landscape as surely as natural forces have. In this book, Daniel S. Pierce examines land use in the Smokies over th...

Jason Richards is the Lifebringer.After being bitten by a vampire and left for dead, Jason awakens as a Ferin, reborn with supernatural abilities unlike any other. While most obtain a single ability, Jason is given several, and his power continues to grow with each passing conquest.But there is more to being the Lifebringer than Jason knows.The enemy is moving and plans are in motion. The Lifebringer holds the key to unlocking a greater evil, the li...

Turner West is a busy man.After killing the vampire lord Silas, he hoped to build a safe haven to protect his people and his women from danger, but the land has other plans.New undead killers have emerged, and something unholy has been born - and it wants blood.With his women, his knife, and his will, he will fight against a danger that far surpasses all that has come before, and this time it's using nature itself to hunt him down.

The end is in sight for Jason and his women.With the vampires attacking at every turn, they follow a secret map in search of the Lost City of Patagonia, a mythical place where humanity might meet its end. But Jason has a plan, his women, and more training with abilities that the vampires have never seen before.He'll need all of them to make it out alive.From the oceans to Brazil to the deepest heart of the jungle, Jason will force the demon Malfas i...

The city is at war, and Kurt is in the middle of it.After defeating the evil Tandi, her empire is up for grabs, and supernatural forces will surge into the city to fill the power vacuum. With help from his women, his bartender, and his librarian, Kurt will begin unraveling an ancient mystery about who really controls New York.But he won't be alone.A proper British gentleman who is far more than he seems will offer to help Kurt - for a price....

Two thousand years in the future. The world is a wasteland, but the women are still gorgeous.Jack Bowman is out of luck and out of money. That is, until he gets an offer to be a part of an experiment for a major scientific research company. All he has to do is get cryogenically frozen for a few years and he'll be rich. What could go wrong?Quite a bit, as it turns out.When Jack's pod splits open and he's met by two beautiful women, he's introduced to...

BackstreetBy: Daniel Vincent Pierce Three teenage boys, Michael, Sean, and Brandon, seem to be typical high school students at Evan Senior High School: they love sports, parties, and having fun. They all have to deal with different things while they grow up, but they eventually find friendship and support from each other. They discover a hot new hangout, BACKSTREET. It becomes the hottest place for teenagers to party on the weekends, but it also brings more danger than anyon...

The summer’s sun was throwing his parting beams over the circular range of high, detached hills that enclosed a small village situated near the mouth of one of the Green Mountain tributaries of the Connecticut river. Long, wavy lines of thin, blue smoke becoming visible in the absence of the sun, lay stretched, with their delicate aerial tracery, from hill to hill above the shaded hamlet, beneath which the piteous bleat of the hungry calf, the lowing of the returning cow, the joyous shouts...

Those who have wandered along the banks of the Otter Creek, in search of the beautiful and picturesque, may have extended their rambles, perhaps, to lake Dunmore, which lies embosomed among the hills a few miles to the eastward of that quiet stream. If so, their taste for natural scenery has doubtless been amply gratified: for there is no spot in the whole range of the Green Mountains that combines more of the requisites for a perfect landscape than this romantic sheet of water and its sur...