North Carolina: People and Environments (review)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. XXXXIII, No. !,May 2003, pp. 151-155 North Carolina: People and Environments, 2nd Edition. Ole Gade, Arthur B. Rex, James E. Young, with L. Baker Perry. Parkway Publishers, Inc., Boone, NC, 2002. 602 pp., 3 appendices; 4 indices: author, people, agencies and organizations , place and subject; maps; tables; figures; boxes; bibliography. $64.50 hardcover (ISBN 1-887905-63-4), $44.50 paper (ISBN 1-887905-64-2). Elizabeth Hines Geographers would love to have a volume like this for every state. The authors have created a reference work for North Carolina that is monumental in scope and detail. An abbreviated first edition of this work appeared in 1986. After North Carolina 's population mushroomed from 6.6 million (in 1990) to nearly 8.2 million in 2001, an increase of21%, the authors expanded and updated their earlier work, producing a much improved version. The Preface acknowledges that the second edition has doubled in size and grown exponentially in detail. They have visualized "state environments on all geographic levels" by including over 800 illustrative maps and photographs, many in full color. The volume is intended not only as a textbook, which role it serves admirably, but as a subregional reference work for any one interested in "understanding the aspects of land, life and livelihood" and in learning the details and preparing an analysis of the state's geographic phenomena. The authors have structured the book to "provide an analytic framework that allows citizens of the state to see where current public policy needs fine tuning, if not changing" as a way of improving statewide and local quality of life and protecting North Carolina's fragile natural heritage. The state's contemporary geography is defined and explicated in three sections. Chapters 1-3 cover the physical environment ; Chapters 4-8 treat the human environments and the human/natural environmental interactions; and Chapters 9-13 address the regional and subregional geography of the state in great detail. The Five Themes of Geography, which are part of the requirements of the North Carolina Department of Instruction, are included in a hierarchical system of regionalization that stretches from the state level through the subregional, county, and neighborhood levels. North Carolina's physical environments are considered in thick detail in the book's first section. Climate, weather, hazards such as hurricanes, which have weighed heavy on the state in the last decade, are considered in easily grasped global and temporal contexts. The geology, geomorphology, soil, hydrology, flora, and fauna follow in similar vein, each in turn well-illustrated with excellent maps, Dr. Hines is an Associate Professor ofGeography in the Earth Sciences Department at the University ofNorth Carolina at Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403. E-mail: hinese@uncw.edu. 152REVIEWS photographs, data tables, diagrams, and enrichment boxes, such as one on El Niño. In addition to the copious illustrations that accompany the text in the first three chapters, pages 61 to 76 include numerous color plates of maps and photographs that further illustrate the concepts and provide a sense of place. North Carolina's human geography is considered next. Included are chapters on demography, again with copious illustrations that place the state's population characteristics in context across time and space. For example, the state's age and gender characteristics from 1980 to 1990 are compared to the national data in a two-page layout (pp. 94-95). The next chapters consider North Carolina's primary economic activities of agriculture, fishing and forestry (mining is considered with geology in the first section). Each topic is well illustrated with maps, photographs, and data, so that anyone requiring detailed information on poultry or sweet potatoes can find it by browsing, although not by looking them up in the Subject Index, which would have made the book even better. The section on primary economic activities is also followed by 18 pages of excellent color plates, which include photographs, data graphs, maps, and boxes. The next chapters explore the state's secondary and tertiary economic activities. For example, the furniture industry, one of the state's most important manufacturing endeavors, is explored from the local through the international levels. Much more is covered...