D.G. Martin

“How will historians rate Barack Obama’s presidency?” Following up my conversation last week with historian William Leuchtenburg about the challenges Hillary Clinton faces in her campaign, I wanted him to begin to put Obama in...

Is it too early to start putting the 2016 presidential election in historical perspective? Maybe. But it is never too early to ask presidential historian and UNC-Chapel Hill emeritus history professor William Leuchtenburg to...

Why does a moderate, progressive journalist write a book critical of his political idol, Terry Sanford, the late governor and senator, and make a hero of Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis? It would just be an interesting...

I have some bad news for North Carolina politicians. Some of your best friends are dying. It is not people that I am thinking about. It is restaurants. In the small towns and cities in our state, candidates for public office...

What does the 1,969-mile border between the United States and Mexico have to do with North Carolina? A North Carolina author delivers pages of answers in a book about his journey along the entire border, from Boca Chica in Texas...

One hundred and fifty years later, is the Civil War finally over? On Saturday, we will mark the 150th anniversary of the April 26, 1865 final surrender by Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston of approximately 90,000 troops to...

When UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Emeritus William Powell died last week at the age of 95, North Carolina lost its dean of history. With constant help and support from his wife Virginia, he authored countless books and articles,...

Here are five recent books, starting with a novel featuring a thinly disguised Jesse Helms, by North Carolina authors to put on your bedside reading table. What is it really like to be the top aide to a powerful North Carolina...

If you just want to read about the incredible basketball game described by Scott Ellsworth in The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph, you can skip the first 250 pages. Then you can...

“Were you a part of the Army that made the Indians leave their homes?” David, my five-year-old grandson, had been learning about American Indians in his preschool. He knew that I had been in the Army many years ago. So, of...