Do people in North Carolina remember Thomas Wolfe, their once famous son, author of Look Homeward, Angel, whose books helped many of us get through the transformation from childhood to adulthood and opened the door to an appreciation of fine writing? Do his words still inspire new writers to open their mental guts and spill […]

Where were you when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot? Most Americans who were alive on Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963, can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they got the awful news. For others, the question is as puzzling as a question about President William McKinley’s […]

“Life is like a mountain range,” Ping Fu told a group of UNC-Chapel Hill students last week. Fu is the founder of Geomagic, Inc., which developed the computer code that made 3-D printing possible. Earlier this year, she sold Geomagic to Spartanburg, S. C., based 3D Systems Corp., a manufacturer of 3-D printing machines, for […]

What does Disney World have to do with Obamacare? There is an answer, but you will have to read on a little bit to get there. First, there is this grandfather’s testimonial about a wonderful experience at Disney World last week. Watching grandchildren experience the magic of the Disney kingdom was a treat of a […]

William Friday has been dead a year now, and we still don’t know how we are going to get along without him.  He was a living monument to all that is, or was, right with our state. Optimism, confidence in the basic goodness of others, respect for those who disagreed, and a relentless commitment to […]

What is the first rule of politics? “Follow the money,” says Mickey, a character in Robert Inman’s new book, “The Governor’s Lady.” It is a rule that we might overlook in a time when our politics seems to be defined by hard-line ideological differences. In fact, some of us would argue that following the money […]

What advice would author Pat Conroy’s late mother give President Obama in dealing with congressional Republicans over the government shutdown and debt ceiling crises? We get a clue in Conroy’s latest book, “The Death of Santini,” which comes out in a few days. Conroy describes his mother Peg’s likely reaction to a demand from Conroy’s […]

How could it be worse? We ask ourselves this question as our government’s ability to lead our country disintegrates and we are mostly helpless to keep it from happening. Funny, though, that this concern can evaporate in light of the challenges that face so many of us–loss of job, no prospects for a new one, […]

President Barack Obama and Governor Pat McCrory are in the same box. Criticized by their opponents for being radical and divisive, they are, at the same time, dismissed by partisans in their own political parties as too moderate and too accommodating. Both came into office promising, and genuinely aspiring, to bring a new spirit of […]

“Aren’t you writing about politics anymore?” a newspaper editor asked me the other day. I stuttered because I have been writing more about books than politics lately. The editor continued, “Are you a little gun-shy from that controversy about the column you wrote bringing Joseph Goebbels’s voice into North Carolina politics?” Maybe he has a […]