Gregory S. Taylor's Central Prison: A History of North Carolina's State Penitentiary is the first scholarly study to explore the prison's entire history, from its origins in the 1870s to its status in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Taylor addresses numerous features of the state's vast prison system, including chain gangs, convict leasing, executions, and the nearby Women's Prison, to describe better the vagaries of living behind bars in the state's largest penitentiary. He incorporates vital elements of the state's history into his analysis to draw clear parallels between the changes occurring in free society and those affecting Central Prison. Throughout, Taylor illustrates that the prison, like the state itself, struggled with issues of race, gender, sectionalism, political infighting, finances, and progressive reform. Finally, Taylor also explores the evolution of penal reform, focusing on the politicians who set prison policy, the officials who administered it, and the untold number of African American inmates who endured incarceration in a state notorious for racial strife and injustice. Central Prison approaches the development of the penal system in North Carolina from a myriad of perspectives, offering a range of insights into the workings of the state penitentiary. It will appeal not only to scholars of criminal justice but also to historians searching for new ways to understand the history of the Tar Heel State and general readers wanting to know more about one of North Carolina's most influential-and infamous-institutions.

This work is the first academic biography of North Carolina poet laureate James Larkin Pearson (1879-1981). Using material from Pearson's personal archive in Wilkes County, from the North Carolina Collection and the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and from contemporary examinations of his life and work, this study offers deeply personal insights into his life and provides extensive examinations of his hopes, joys, fears, pains, and sorrows. The work also includes lengthy studies of his poetry and his journalistic efforts and examines their place within the larger cultural milieu. In the process, the book addresses two themes that become apparent in Pearson's life and work: his Tar Heel spirit and his individualism. He was a fighter who overcame poverty, a poor education, personal tragedies, and professional neglect to achieve great success. He also abided by his own set of religious, artistic, and political values regardless of the consequences. This work thus offers the first personal and professional examination of James Larkin Pearson, provides insights on North Carolina and its people, and examines the benefits and drawbacks of following one's own path.

Paul Crouch (1903-1955) was the quintessential anti-Communist paid government informer. A naive, ill-educated recruit who found a family, a livelihood, and a larger romantic cause in the Communist Party, he spent more than fifteen years organising American workers, meeting with Soviet leaders, and trying to infiltrate the U.S. military with Communist soldiers. He left the party in 1941, in part because of a growing conviction that the leadership had become dictatorial, but also in part out of vengeance for perceived wrongs. As public perceptions of Communism shifted during the Cold War, Crouch's economic failures, desire for fame, and greed morphed him into a vehement ideologue for the anti-Communist movement. During five years of testimony, he named Robert Oppenheimer, Charlie Chaplin, and many others as Communists and claimed the civil rights movement was Communist inspired. In 1954, much of Crouch's testimony was exposed as perjury, but he remained defiant to the end. How, and why, one southerner could become a loyal foot soldier on both sides of the Cold War ideological divide is the subject of Gregory Taylor's incisive biography. Relying on personal papers, FBI records, and official Communist Party files, Taylor weaves through the seemingly contradictory life of the individual once known as the most dangerous man in America.