Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina’s sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state’s Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portr...

The Coasts of Carolina captures the vibrancy of the North Carolina oceanfront, sound country, and interior shores behind the barrier islands. Scott Taylor, who has been photographing the coast for almost thirty years, and Bland Simpson, whose many coastal books have delighted readers for two decades, come together to offer an inviting visual and textual portrait organized around coastal themes such as nature, fishing, and community life, with an emphasis on particular places and s...

From beyond the unknowns of the Mighty Brim Mountains of the west they camehordes of nomadic giants called Troguares led by a merciless warlord, Obizar, their king. With the use of dark sorcery and having an insatiable appetite to conquer an entire world, he and his armies slowly swept across the land for nearly thousand years, bringing kingdom after kingdom of men to their knees, leaving death and destruction in their wake. While both enslaving and supplementing them as food, he held all ...

"The best study of Grant's military career since Bruce Catton's two volumes. . . . The best treatment of Union military command and strategy now in print." — The New RepublicMany modern historians have painted Ulysses S. Grant as a butcher, a drunk, and a failure as president. Others have argued the exact opposite and portray him with saintlike levels of ethic and intellect.In Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822–1865, historian Bro...

Historians have traditionally drawn distinctions between Ulysses S. Grant’s military and political careers. In Let Us Have Peace, Brooks Simpson questions such distinctions and offers a new understanding of this often enigmatic leader. He argues that during the 1860s Grant was both soldier and politician, for military and civil policy were inevitably intertwined during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. According to Simpson, Grant instinctively understood that war was 'politics...

This book fills a gap in Civil War literature on the strategies employed by the Union and Confederacy in the East, offering a more integrated interpretation of military operations that shows how politics, public perception, geography, and logistics shaped the course of military operations in the East.For all the literature about Civil War military operations and leadership, precious little has been written about strategy, particularly in what has become known as th...

Some lives disappear quietly not with dramatic endings, but with small *moments that go unnoticed until it is too late. Behind the ordinary routines of a nursing home, where days blur into one another and silence lingers in the hallways, one woman's story unfolds through forgotten memories, unfinished conversations, and the echoes of a life that refuses to be completely erased.When Melly, an elderly widow living in the Shady Pines care home, finds herself increasingly isolated from...

Alfonzo Joseph learns a lesson in faith on his first day of school.

Has the time come to throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism? Will socialism bring about equality and remove greed? Aren't the Nordic countries successful examples of socialism?In this book, you will learn:-What the pillars of any economic system are and what the Bible has to say about the pillars of capitalism and socialism.-The connections among socialism, communism, and fascism.-What a fair reading of the evidence has to say about all these sys...

A good king is looking for the right words to help his people, rich or poor, deal with life’s challenges. Ezra, a humble servant boy, wants to help the king solve his problem. Finally, through a series of mishaps, Ezra hands the king a strange gift—and the perfect words. Many cultures around the world have told versions of this story for centuries. President Abraham Lincoln even included one in a speech. This lively version is adapted from a Jewish source, and it is the great king Solomon ...

When a handsome, smooth-talking college student asked my sixteen-year-old mother to be his wife, she gave little consideration to the longterm consequences of accepting such a proposal. So, with little introspection given to whether or not she was ready, and even less toward her suitor, my mom blindly accepted. It didn't take long after the ceremony for her eyes to open, and realize she'd married an abusive drunk, aka my father.It was after a night of self-indulgence when my dad ca...

Berry Simpson stands at the summit of the Guadalupe Mountains and gazes out across the vast panorama of the Sonoran Desert. "It's breathtaking in its raw unconcern for the hiker," he writes. "Oddly enough, that indifference speaks to my heart."It's one of many perspectives that have, over the decades, shaped the author's life. Eloquently, with a penetrating but gentle eye and many a smile-because, as he learned from his dad, "there's always a joke"-Berry examines the things that ma...