Tar Heel Lightnin'
Subtitle: How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2019
Place of publication: North Carolina, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9781469653556
Copyright date: 2019
Description: "From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina boasted some of the nation's most restrictive laws on alcohol production and sale. For much of this era, it was also the nation's leading producer of bootleg liquor. Over the years, written accounts, popular songs, and Hollywood movies have turned the state's moonshiners, fast cars, and frustrated Feds into legends. But in Tar Heel Lightnin', Daniel S. Pierce tells the real history of moonshine in North Carolina as never before. This well-illustrated, entertaining book introduces a surprisingly varied cast of characters who operated secret stills and ran liquor from the swamps of the Tidewater to Piedmont forests and mountain coves. From the state's earliest days through Prohibition to the present, Pierce shows that moonshine crossed race and economic lines, linking men and women, the rebellious and the respectable, the oppressed and the merely opportunistic. As Pierce recounts, even churchgoing types might run shipments of 'that good ol' mountain dew' when hard times came and there was no social safety net to break the fall"--