The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina.

The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina. By Milton Ready. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. xviii, 404. $39.95, ISBN 1-57003-591-1.)

Milton Ready, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, has written a marvelous narrative history of the state of North Carolina. He builds on the works of past state historians such as Robert D. W. Connor, Albert Ray Newsome, Hugh Lefler, and William Powell to produce a narrative account of the state's history. Ready successfully blends chronological and topical information on the diverse geography, people, and events as well as major political, social, and economic developments that occurred, beginning when part of this region became Carolina, named for King Charles II of England in 1663. and concludes his study with a discussion of the demographic changes that continue to evolve to the present. Ready tells his story in twenty-two chapters, and he does it masterfully by relying on current secondary sources, especially monographs, and published journal articles.

Unlike earlier state histories, Ready does place an emphasis on the events unfolding around North Carolina's role in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Ready covers North Carolina and the American Revolution in three chapters. He describes the battle at Moore's Creek Bridge that occurred in 1774 as "the Concord of North Carolina and the South" (p. 144). He concludes, however, that this battle did not sway most North Carolinians to support the patriots, and "North Carolina, as a new state, only reluctantly supported the forces of independence" (pp. 114-15). Ready covers North Carolina's role in the Civil War in two chapters. He describes the reluctance and indecisiveness that abounded when the state left the Union in May 1861, and, with the exception of the trans-Mississippi West, it was the last southern state "to lay down its arms for the Confederacy" (p. 246).

Ready concludes his study by describing how the process of urbanization in this state began to take root in the late nineteenth century and gained momentum throughout the twentieth century. Yet the state's urbanization model has baffled many regional economists and community planners. Urban development in the state "preferred to spread itself horizontally in a series of large towns and small cities and not vertically into sprawling metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Houston" (p. 361). The majority of North Carolinians still reside in small towns that are dispersed throughout the entire state. Today only 7 percent of the state's population resides in Charlotte, the state's largest city. North Carolina was known as "'poor Carolina" in the colonial period, and continuities from the past to the present continue, especially with regard to poverty. Today nearly 28 percent of the state's population live at or below the national poverty level.

The Tar Heel State: A History o/ North Carolina contains nearly three hundred photographs, maps, and drawings that document and illustrate the diverse and rich history of this state. Some of the most intriguing photographs appear in the chapters covering such topics as North Carolina's New South vision, the Populists and Progressives, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement. Milton Ready's lively and engagingly written narrative will appeal to a wide audience ranging from the general reader to undergraduate and graduate students interested in North Carolina's dynamic history.

LLOYD JOHNSON

Campbell University