In The Last Fire-Eater, renowned historian of the American South William A. Link examines the life of Roger A. Pryor, a Virginia secessionist, Confederate general, and earnest proponent of postwar sectional reconciliation whose life involved a series of remarkable transformations. Pryor’s journey, Link reveals, mirrored that of the South. At times, both proved puzzling and contradictory.Pryor recast himself during a crucial period in southern history between the 1850s and ...

Attempting the perfect murder, a killer encounters the perfect cop.After years of get-rich-quick schemes, Troy Pellingham's bank account is empty and his options are down to one: take a job in his uncle's rare book shop, and spend his days working for an unpleasant man whose only redeeming quality is a mammoth bank account. Though well into his eighties, Uncle Rodney is the picture of good health, and the day when Troy will inherit the old man's money seems very far away. But then ...

Did You Know?This book is available as a Wiley E-Text.The Wiley E-Text is a complete digital version of the text that makes time spent studying more efficient.Course materials can be accessed on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device—so that learning can take place anytime, anywhere.A more affordable alternative to traditional print, the Wiley E-Text creates a flexible user experience:...

Few North Carolinians have been as well known or as widely respected as William Friday (1920–2012). The former president of the University of North Carolina remained prominent in public affairs in the state and elsewhere throughout his life and ranked as one of the most important American university presidents of the post–World War II era. In the second edition of this comprehensive biography, William Link traces Friday’s long and remarkable career and commemorates his legendary life.

Arthur Link (1920-1998) was one of the great historians of his generation, a prolific author with a wide following inside and outside the profession. For many years the foremost authority on Woodrow Wilson, he wrote a five-volume biography of the president and edited a sixty-nine volume edition of Wilson’s papers.Margaret Link (1918-1996), his wife and fellow North Carolinian, was the emotional core of the family. As an activist, she helped form an interdenominational crisis minist...

After conquering Atlanta in the summer of 1864 and occupying it for two months, Union forces laid waste to the city in November. William T. Sherman’s invasion was a pivotal moment in the history of the South and Atlanta’s rebuilding over the following fifty years came to represent the contested meaning of the Civil War itself. The war’s aftermath brought contentious transition from Old South to New for whites and African Americans alike. Historian William Link argues that this struggle def...

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) dominated the political landscape of North Carolina during the last half of the twentieth century. Though Helms’s thirty years in the US Senate are most remembered for what he opposed rather than what he achieved, he was a central figure in modern conservativism.In this concise interpretive biography, William A. Link centers Helms in the political realignment of the late twentieth-century South and the national ascendance of modern conservatism. Helms helped...

Focusing on the cultural conflicts between social reformers and southern communities, William Link presents an important reinterpretation of the origins and impact of progressivism in the South. He shows that a fundamental clash of values divided reformers and rural southerners, ultimately blocking the reforms. His book, based on extensive archival research, adds a new dimension to the study of American reform movements.The new group of social reformers that emerged near the end of...

William Link’s account of the transformation of Virginia’s country schools between 1870 and 1920 fills important gaps in the history of education and the social history of the South. His theme is the impact of localism and community on the processes of public education — first as a motive force in the spread of schooling, then as a powerful factor that collided with the goals of urban reformers.After the Civil War, localism dominated every dimension of education in rural Virginia a...

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, an event that soon became a bold statement of presidential power, a dramatic shift in the rationale for fighting the Civil War, and a promise of future freedom for four million enslaved Americans. But the document marked only a beginning; freedom's future was anything but certain. Thereafter, the significance of both the Proclamation and of emancipation assumed new and diverse meanings, as African Americans explor...

This book explores how an eclectic selection of narratives and images of the American South have been created and consumed. The thirteen essays move beyond both traditional accounts of southern identity as either declining or enduring, and more recent postmodernist accounts of the South as imagined or invented. Instead, the contributors emphasize how narratives and images of "the South" have real social, political, and economic ramifications, and that they register at various local, region...

“This is a remarkable collection of essays. Citizenship clearly forms the backbone for these investigations but the range of the contributors’ backgrounds (in terms of disciplinary training) and the approaches they take to the question makes this collection both broad and deep. As it turns out, there is no other way to tackle a concept as central but also as slippery as citizenship. A shorter or more focused collection would miss the nuances and insights that this one offers.”—Aaron Sheeha...