Robert Mason

It was not only mistaken but thoughtless, Mother would say ever afterward, for The Baby's death to be remembered as the town's first of the 1918 influenza pandemic. That sadness occurred on February 6, which was early for even the opening and mildest [...]

Norfolk: The First Four Centuries. By Thomas C. Parramore, with Peter C. Stewart and Tommy L. Bogger. Virginia. $20.00. Sixteen years after Norfolk celebrated its tercentenary, Norfolk: The First Four Centuries, is off the presses and sold out. Act [...]

In 1942 I had a new job, an infant daughter, good reason to believe I would not be drafted, an older brother at an overseas Army base, and a bad conscience. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor messed me up for fair. On that Sunday December Seventh [...]

In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia. By Earl Lewis. California. $34.95. When, not so very long ago, a black patriarch died in the Eastern North Carolina town of Tarboro, his body was shipped by tra [...]

House of Dreams: The Bingham Family of Louisville. By Marie Brenner. Random House. $19.95. Most medium to upper-size American newspapers are survivors of many decades of unruly competition that came down, during the first half of this century, to [...]

Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms. By Ernest B. Furgurson. Norton. $18.95. Jesse Helms's racism is pretty well taken for granted in North Carolina. His opponents there—a minority in three senatorial elections—are concerned principally with h [...]

The food cheered him. Spread across the kitchen table's faded oilcloth and overflowing onto the cabinet counter were fried and baked chicken, ham, and barbecue, and an assortment of vegetables and pickles. The barbecue was homemade: lean pork cooke [...]

After the State of North Carolina electrocuted their brother, the Vine sisters drew their curtains. They lived behind them the remainder of their lives, stepping outside only to sweep their yard or buy what was necessary to keep them as they were, [...]

Across The Years: Memories of a Virginian. By Virginius Dabney. Doubleday. $10.00. RED Smith wrote that his brother Art would quit a newspaper job to see a circus. Virginius Dabney, who like the late Art Smith practiced journalism in the era of the [...]