Terra Incognita is the most comprehensive bibliography of sources related to the Great Smoky Mountains ever created. Compiled and edited by three librarians, this authoritative and meticulously researched work is an indispensable reference for scholars and students studying any aspect of the region’s past. Starting with the de Soto map of 1544, the earliest document that purports to describe anything about the Great Smoky Mountains, and continuing through 1934 with the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—today the most visited national park in the United States—this volume catalogs books, periodical and journal articles, selected newspaper reports, government publications, dissertations, and theses published during that period. This bibliography treats the Great Smoky Mountain Region in western North Carolina and east Tennessee systematically and extensively in its full historic and social context. Prefatory material includes a timeline of the Great Smoky Mountains and a list of suggested readings on the era covered. The book is divided into thirteen thematic chapters, each featuring an introductory essay that discusses the nature and value of the materials in that section. Following each overview is an annotated bibliography that includes full citation information and a bibliographic description of each entry. Chapters cover the history of the area; the Cherokee in the Great Smoky Mountains; the national forest movement and the formation of the national park; life in the locality; Horace Kephart, perhaps the most important chronicler to document the mountains and their inhabitants; natural resources; early travel; music; literature; early exploration and science; maps; and recreation and tourism. Sure to become a standard resource on this rich and vital region, Terra Incognita is an essential acquisition for all academic and public libraries and a boundless resource for researchers and students of the region.

Ernest Vandiver was elected governor of the state of Georgia in 1958 on a platform of fiscal conservatism and steadfast resistance to desegregation. Having vowed to defend Georgia's segregated social system at all costs, Vandiver nevertheless concluded that the state could not close its schools to avoid desegregation. Because of his decision to reject the path taken by George Wallace in Alabama and Orval Fabus in Arkansas and to save public education in the state by complying with federal court mandates, Vandiver was denounced by the state's more vocal proponents of segregation. Using primary sources and extensive interviews with the governor and his contemporaries, Henderson tells the full story of Vandiver's life as a transitional figure in the political history of the state. He portrays Vandiver as a man cast by circumstances into presiding over a crisis greater than any Georgia governor had faced since the Civil War. Henderson also notes some of Vandiver's less recognized accomplishments, including the involvement of state government in furthering tourism, foreign investment, and industry. Ernest Vandiver is here recognized for his significant achievements guiding the state through a period of rapid transformation.

In keeping with the state's major demographic upheavals of recent decades, Georgia politics is an interesting--and sometimes volatile--mix of tradition and change. In contrast to the state's rural past, most Georgians now live in cities or suburbs, and more than 40 percent of the population was born outside the state. However, religion and race remain issues that politicians ignore at great peril, and the state still fares poorly in measures of poverty, education, and voter turnout. Politics in Georgia uses a comparative framework to examine four major topics: the foundations of contemporary Georgia politics, political participation, major political institutions, and selected public policies. Material new to this edition includes: analysis of 2006 state elections coverage of trends and events since the book first appeared in 1997 an examination of the Republican Party's rise in Georgia an entirely new chapter on public opinion significantly expanded treatment of public policy on such issues as the environment, social welfare, education, transportation, economic development, and public safety discussions of major federal court cases that deal with Georgia-and that have set important precedents for the nation Throughout, Politics in Georgia compares the state with the federal government and the other forty-nine states, as well as with earlier periods of Georgia's political development. The result is a thorough, up-to-date resource on Georgia's dynamic political system.