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The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics: The Personalities, Elections, and Events That Shaped Modern North Carolina
How can a state be represented by Jesse Helms and John Edwards at the same time? Journalist Rob Christensen answers that question and navigates a century of political history in North Carolina, one of the most vibrant and competitive southern states, where neither conservatives nor liberals, Democrats nor Republicans, have been able to rest easy. It is this climate of competition and challenge, Christensen argues, that enabled North Carolina to rise from poverty in the nineteenth century to become a leader in research, education, and banking in the twentieth. Although party divisions and the issues of race that often distinguish them are deeply rooted, Christensen explains, North Carolina voters remain loyal to candidates who focus on issues such as education and building a business-friendly infrastructure. He takes us to picket lines and debates and through numerous red-baiting and race-baiting political campaigns. Along the way we are introduced to many remarkable characters, including a U.S. senator who was a Nazi sympathizer, a candidate for governor who was a Soviet agent, a senator who helped bring down Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, and a TV commentator who helped usher in the Reagan Revolution. Long before the talk of red state-blue state polarization, North Carolina was an intensely divided state politically. With Christensen as a guide, readers may find there is sense after all in the topsy-turvy nature of Tar Heel politics..
Price: $18.65
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Stop Depression Now: SAM-e: The Breakthrough Supplement that Works as Well as Prescription Drugs
SAM-e (pronounced "sammy"), short for S-adenosyl-methionine, will revolutionize the treatment of depression in the U.S. as it has for two decades in Europe, claim authors Richard Brown and Teodoro Bottiglieri. Not an herb, not a prescription drug, SAM-e is an over-the-counter natural supplement that has undergone extensive testing and has just become available in the U.S. "Study after study has confirmed that SAM-e works as well as or better than any other antidepressant," say the authors. It also works faster and with far fewer side effects, and it seems to help osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia as well. Stop Depression Now is more than a book about SAM-e. It also presents a four-step program to lift you out of depression and prevent a recurrence. Step 1 is a self-assessment test to determine the severity of your depression. Step 2 includes information on how to use SAM-e. Step 3 is a diet plan that emphasizes foods and vitamins that will help you feel better (and avoid those that will make you feel worse). Step 4 offers lifestyle changes and therapeutic techniques to help you in the long term. The authors' credentials show that they know their subject: Richard Brown is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, a psychiatrist in private practice, and a research physician; Teodoro Bottiglieri is a senior research scientist, director of neuropharmacology, and associate professor at Baylor University Medical Center, and has been studying SAM-e for 15 years. If you are severely depressed or suicidal, have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, or are already taking an antidepressant, confer with your health professional before taking SAM-e--do not self-treat. Otherwise, the authors certainly make this supplement sound like a breakthrough tool for depression. --Joan Price.
Price: $1.91
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Brazil, the home for southerners: or, A practical account of what the author, and others, who visited that country, for the same objects, saw and did while in that empire. By Rev. Ballard S. Dunn ...
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That Same Flower: Floria Aemilia's Letter to Saint Augustine
In his first and most famous novel, Sophie's World, the Norwegian Jostein Gaarder took on the entire history of Western philosophy, neatly sandwiching Socrates, Sartre, and everybody in between into a series of letters to a 14-year-old schoolgirl. This time around, Gaarder has again produced a philosophical novel in epistolary form. In That Same Flower, however, he narrows his focus to a single figure--St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, whose classic Confessions anticipated the current memoir boom by almost 16 centuries. The saint himself fails to get a word in edgewise. Instead, the book consists of a long, grief-stricken letter from his former mistress, Floria Aemilia (a figure whom the author has reconstructed from passing references in Augustine's own writings). This most articulate correspondent has a good many bones to pick with her former lover; he abandoned her on several different occasions, often at the behest of his 4th-century yenta of a mother, and kept her from the child they had together. Yet along with these personal matters (and perhaps inseparable from them) is Floria's critique of Christian dogma--particularly the ascetic tradition that Augustine embodied. Deriding his renunciation of all earthly pleasures, she reminds him of the good old precelibate days: "Can you still remember how you stroked me all over and seemed to tighten every bud before it opened?... And then you went away and sold me for the sake of your soul's salvation! What infidelity, Aurel, what guilt! No, I don't believe in a God who demands human sacrifices. I don't believe in a God who lays waste to a woman's life in order to save a man's soul." An erudite and intelligent argument on behalf of the senses, That Same Flower is also an oddly moving love story--or at least half of one--with an unmistakable feminist twist..
Price: $10.25
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