The North Carolina Gazetteer first appeared to wide acclaim in 1968 and has remained an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the Tar Heel State, from historians to journalists, from creative writers to urban planners, from backpackers to armchair travelers. This revised and expanded edition adds approximately 1,200 new entries, bringing to nearly 21,000 the number of North Carolina cities, towns, crossroads, waterways, mountains, and other places identified here. The stories attached to place names are at the core of the book and the reason why it has stood the test of time. Some recall faraway places: Bombay, Shanghai, Moscow, Berlin. Others paint the locality as a little piece of heaven on earth: Bliss, Splendor, Sweet Home. In many cases the name derivations are unusual, sometimes wildly so: Cat Square, Huggins Hell, Tater Hill, Whynot. Telling us much about our own history in these snapshot histories of particular locales, The North Carolina Gazetteer provides an engaging, authoritative, and fully updated reference to place names from all corners of the Tar Heel State.

The rich history of North Carolina's Outer Banks is reflected in the names of its towns, geographic features, and waterways. A book over twenty years in the making, The Outer Banks Gazetteer is a comprehensive reference guide to the region's place names—over 3,000 entries in all. Along the way, Roger L. Payne has cataloged an incredible history of beaches, inlets, towns and communities, islands, rivers, and even sand dunes. There are also many entries for locations that no longer exist—inlets that have disappeared due to erosion or storms, abandoned towns, and Native American villages—which highlight important and nearly forgotten places in North Carolina's history. Going beyond simply recounting the facts behind the names, Payne offers information-packed and entertainingly written stories of North Carolina, its coastal geography, and its people. Perfect for anyone interested in the North Carolina coast, this invaluable reference guide uncovers the history of one of the most-visited areas in the Southeast.

An informative compendium, the Encyclopedia of North Carolina is abundantly illustrated with nearly 400 photographs and maps."--BOOK JACKET.

William Mervale Smith, surgeon of the 85th New York Volunteer Infantry, faithfully kept a diary of his Civil War experiences. Smith's introspective musings cover matters both professional and personal, from the horror of battle and the almost equally terrible politics of war to his deepest longings and questions about love and spirituality. While some diarists wrote self-consciously, anticipating eventual publication of their words, Smith's entries, as author Thomas Lowry explains, "are of such a personal and self-revelatory nature that we can reasonably conclude that he wrote to himself alone, as a sort of spiritual exercise of self-communication."

Reprint of the Simon & Schuster edition originally published in 1993. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.