Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France

History

Pierce, Daniel S.

Americas

The University of North Carolina Press

Corn From a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains

About the Author\nDaniel S. Pierce is professor of history at the University of North Carolina in Asheville. His other books include Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World,The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park, Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, and Hazel Creek: The Life and Death of an Iconic Mountain Community.\nIn the Great Smoky Mountains, moonshine making was a world unto itself. On the one hand, moonshining was about dynamite-totting lookouts, fast cars, snitching, quick cash, hidden stills, "revenuers," and deadly gunplay. On the other, it was a story of earnest farm families living in remote mountain valleys and practicing their traditional craft of moonshining so they could buy shoes for their children. Yet perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is the sudden resurgence of making moonshine in the Southern mountains today.\nJoin author and noted historian Dr. Daniel S. Pierce to learn about the traditions, foibles, and dangers of mountain "blockading" from the early 19th century to tomorrow.

Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains

Smokies Life

In the Great Smoky Mountains, moonshine making was a world unto itself. On the one hand, moonshining was about dynamite-totting lookouts, fast cars, snitching, quick cash, hidden stills, "revenuers," and deadly gunplay. On the other, it was a story of earnest farm families living in remote mountain valleys and practicing their traditional craft of moonshining so they could buy shoes for their children. Yet perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is the sudden resurgence of making moonshine in the Southern mountains today. Join author and noted historian Dr. Daniel S. Pierce to learn about the traditions, foibles, and dangers of mountain "blockading" from the early 19th century to tomorrow.

In this history of the stock car racing circuit known as NASCAR, Daniel 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. Following NASCAR founder Big Bill France from his start as a mechanic, Real NASCAR details the sport's genesis as it has never been shown before. Pierce 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 industry, a story that readers will find both fascinating and controversial. Drawing on the memories of a variety of participants--including highly colorful characters like Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, Gober Sosebee, Smokey Yunick, Bunky Knudsen, Humpy Wheeler, Bobby Isaac, Junior Johnson, and Big Bill France himself--Real NASCAR shows how the reputation for wildness of these racers-by-day and bootleggers-by-night drew throngs of spectators to the tracks in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. They came to watch their heroes maneuver ordinary automobiles at incredible speed, beating and banging on each other, wrecking spectacularly, and fighting out their differences in the infield. Although France faced many challenges--including a fickle Detroit that often seemed unsure of its support for the sport, safety issues that killed star drivers and threatened its very existence, and drivers who twice tried to unionize to gain a bigger piece of the NASCAR pie--by the early 1970s France and his allies had laid a firm foundation for what has become today a billion-dollar industry and arguably the largest spectator sport in America.

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 as never before. This well-illustrated, entertaining book introduces a surprisingly varied cast of characters who operated secret stills and ran liquor from the swamps of the Tidewater to Piedmont forests and mountain coves. From the state's earliest days through Prohibition to the present, Pierce shows that moonshine crossed race and economic lines, linking men and women, the rebellious and the respectable, the oppressed and the merely opportunistic. As Pierce recounts, even churchgoing types might run shipments of "that good ol' mountain dew" when hard times came and there was no social safety net to break the fall. Folklore, popular culture, and changing laws have helped fuel a renaissance in making and drinking commercial moonshine, and Pierce shows how today's producers understand their ties to the past. Above all, this book reveals that moonshine's long, colorful history features surprises that can change how we understand a state and a region.

Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Beverages & Wine

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 the centuries, describing the pageant of peoples who have inhabited these mountains and then focusing on the twentieth-century movement to create a national park. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials, Pierce presents the most balanced account available of the development of the park. He tells how park supporters set about raising money to buy the land often from resistant timber companies and describes the fierce infighting between wilderness advocates and tourism boosters over the shape the park would take. He also discloses the unfortunate human cost of the park s creation: the displacement of the area s inhabitants. Pierce is especially insightful regarding the often-neglected history of the park since 1945. He looks at the problems caused by roadbuilding, tree blight, and air pollution that becomes trapped in the mountains natural haze. He also provides astute assessments of the Cades Cove restoration, the Fontana Lake road construction, and other recent developments involving the park. Full of outstanding photographs and boasting a breadth of coverage unmatched in other books of its kind, The Great Smokies will help visitors better appreciate the wilderness experience they have sought. Pierce s account makes us more aware of humanity's long interaction with the land while capturing the spirit of those idealistic environmentalists who realized their vision to protect it. The Author: Daniel S. Pierce teaches in the department of history and the humanities program at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and is a contributor to The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. "

Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park

Univ Tennessee Press

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 the centuries, describing the pageant of peoples who have inhabited these mountains and then focusing on the twentieth-century movement to create a national park. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials, Pierce presents the most balanced account available of the development of the park. He tells how park supporters set about raising money to buy the land—often from resistant timber companies—and describes the fierce infighting between wilderness advocates and tourism boosters over the shape the park would take. He also discloses the unfortunate human cost of the park’s creation: the displacement of the area’s inhabitants. Pierce is especially insightful regarding the often-neglected history of the park since 1945. He looks at the problems caused by roadbuilding, tree blight, and air pollution that becomes trapped in the mountains’ natural haze. He also provides astute assessments of the Cades Cove restoration, the Fontana Lake road construction, and other recent developments involving the park. Full of outstanding photographs and boasting a breadth of coverage unmatched in other books of its kind, The Great Smokies will help visitors better appreciate the wilderness experience they have sought. Pierce’s account makes us more aware of humanity's long interaction with the land while capturing the spirit of those idealistic environmentalists who realized their vision to protect it. The Author: Daniel S. Pierce teaches in the department of history and the humanities program at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and is a contributor to The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.

Seeking a taste of unspoiled wilderness, more than nine 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. He tells how park supporters set about raising money to buy the land—often from resistant timber companies—and describes the fierce infighting between wilderness advocates and tourism boosters over the shape the park would take. He also discloses the unfortunate human cost of the park’s creation: the displacement of the area’s inhabitants. The new preface chronicles developments in the park since the book’s original publication in 2000. Over the past decade and a half, the park has experienced a dramatic and improbable improvement in air quality, a variety of successful animal reintroduction programs—including, most spectacularly, elk—numerous improvements to trails and roads, and the ending of long-standing dispute over the “Road to Nowhere,” which had its origins in the founding of the park eight decades ago. Pierce also points out new challenges that have emerged in the park—and there is none more dangerous than the invasive species known as the wooly adelgid, which threatens to annihilate the park’s 800 acres of old-growth hemlocks. The recent history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park provides ample proof of Pierce’s conclusion: “just as people have the power to set aside places as wonderful as the Cataloochee Valley and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they also have the power to destroy it.” Daniel S. Pierce is professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. He is the author of Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, and Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains. 

The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pierce, Daniel S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pierce, Daniel S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pierce, Daniel S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France

Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains

Corn From a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains

Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France

Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World

Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park

Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park

The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park