North Carolina Bookwatch 2012-2013 Archive | UNC-TV

In Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal, the distinguished historian William H. Chafe boldly argues that the trajectory of the Clintons’ political lives can be understood only through the prism of their personal relationship. Each experienced a difficult childhood. Bill had an abusive stepfather, and his mother was in denial about the family’s pathology.

As a leader of the Democratic Party and key member of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet, Josephus Daniels was one of the most influential progressive politicians in the country, and as secretary of the navy during the First World War, he became one of the most important men in the world. He forever changed the newspaper industry in the South, changing the relationship between politics and the news media.

Do you remember “The Big Fish” the wonderful novel by Daniel Wallace and how it made us suspend disbelief? Well he’s done it again with his latest novel, “The Kings and Queens of Roam” and he is here to tells us about that book and the magic he uses to draws us into his worlds of imagination—and that when we talk to Daniel on North Carolina Bookwatch……. next.

We all know that our health care system is in trouble, but who's responsible? Nortin Hadler says that it is you and me and that we have a duty to understand the existing system and to visualize what the outcome of successful reform might look like. And he provides a guide in his latest book, "The Citizen Patient: Reforming Health Care for the Sake of the Patient, Not the System."

The third and final volume of the Literary Trails of North Carolina” series establishes Georgann Eubanks as the master guide to our states literary history. She's already taken us to Murphy and now in “Literary Trails of Eastern North Carolina: A Guidebook, “ she takes us from Raleigh through the coastal plain, all the way to Manteo and she's here to tell us some of what she learned along the way…

She lives on a farm in mountainous Madison County north of Asheville & sets her popular novels right there on the farms and small towns were she & her husband have lived since moving there from Tampa, Florida, in 1975. We will find out how she turns her mountain surroundings into compelling fiction when we talk to Vicki Lane about "Under the Skin" on North Carolina Bookwatch..... next.

One thing that most North Carolinians share is a love for our coast. We know our coast is fragile, but do we love it too much to protect it and how can we know what is best to do. Retired East Carolina professor Stanley Riggs will talk to us about “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future,” on North Carolina Bookwatch……. next.

In The Tree of Forgetfulness, writer Pam Durban, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, continues her exploration of southern history and memory. This mesmerizing and disquieting novel recovers the largely untold story of a brutal Jim Crow-era triple lynching in Aiken County, South Carolina. Through the interweaving of several characters' voices, Durban produces a complex narrative in which each section reveals a different facet of the event. The Tree of Forgetfulness resurrects a troubled past and explores the individual and collective loyalties that led a community to choose silence over justice.

Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction. Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life’s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction.

Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student.