It has been almost five years since the last North Carolina Bookwatch program was produced and aired by PBS-NC. 

Some people still ask me what programs PBS NC Bookwatch would be airing if the program were still in existence. 

Below are several North Carolina related books and authors that would certainly be considered.

 

“The Book of Flaco: The World's Most Famous Bird” by UNC-Wilmington professor David Gessner tells the story of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who, after 13 years confinement, escaped from Central Park Zoo on February 2, 2023, when his cage was vandalized.

According to Gessner “Within days of his release Flaco was becoming known throughout the world, and within a couple of weeks Flaco mania was cresting. In a society that seems to value fame above all else, Flaco had it...The networks all covered Flaco as did ‘Good Morning America.’”

Flaco, by the way, was hatched in North Carolina before being sent to the Central Park Zoo.

 

Carter Wrenn is a great storyteller, though he may be better known as the late Senator Jesse Helms’s long-time aide. Now he has a book, “The Trail of the Serpent.” 

I asked where that title came from. Here is his response: “There is a poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore – it includes a line, 'Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the Serpent is over them all.' That's where the line came from. It's at the front of the book, before the table of contents. And I mentioned it once more on the last page of the last chapter. Basically, I wrote about 'the trail of the serpent' —the devil—and 'the flowers of Eden' across 50 years of politics.”

 

Over the past months we have learned much about Elon Musk from his activities with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk led a charge against supposed wasteful government spending and his recent breakup with President Donald Trump. We still do not know him. Maybe it is a good time to read again with the 600-plus-page book “Elon Musk” written by Walter Isaacson.

At the end of the book Isaacson wrote the following about Musk: "Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he's an asshole? The answer is no, of course not. One can admire a person's good traits and decry the bad ones. 

“But it's also important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly. It can be hard to remove the dark ones without unraveling the whole cloth. As Shakespeare teaches us, all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex. Even the best people, he wrote, are ‘molded out of faults.’

“It was a pleasing concept: an impulse-control button that could diffuse Musk’s tweets as well as all of his dark impulsive actions and the demon-mode eruptions that leave rubble in his wake. But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? 

“Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or make the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

 

One of this year’s best books is by Georgann Eubanks.

In “The Fabulous Ordinary” shows Eubanks’ great skills is writing about things that might seem simple or ordinary but are too important not to explain and celebrate.

In her new book she turns her readers into fellow explorers as she shares her experiences in her book’s 15 chapters each of which describes an important natural and endangered plant or animal.

William Leuchtenburg

In his latest and final book, “Patriot Presidents,” William Leuchtenburg, with the help of his spouse, editor and writing partner, Jean Anne Leuchtenburg, sets out to narrate and explain the record of the first six presidents, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, our founding fathers. 

The book’s opening chapter on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 analyzes how the founding fathers created a unique institution, the presidency. They were determined to authorize an effective chief executive but cautious of monarchy. The presidency that developed over the next generation was fashioned less by the clauses in the Constitution than by the way that the first presidents responded to challenges. 

A reader of Leuchtenburg’s remarkable book will treasure his wisdom, clarity, and great story-telling gifts that made him a great teacher and writer.