A capitalist tool.

• Position: North Carolina Atlas - Brief Article

Most any new book that deals with North Carolina sooner or later wends its way across my desk. Those that touch on business or economics wind up in our editorial library. Others, especially those dealing with Tar Heel history, go home with me, joining their brethren on my bookshelves. This one, however, never leaves my office, perched always within arm's reach of where I sit writing this.

As North Carolina enters a new century, perhaps no Southern state faces a more intriguing combination of challenges and opportunities. One of the nation's most industrialized states, it also has one of the country's largest farm populations; home of one of the oldest and most distinguished systems of higher education, it has a public school system that lags behind national standards; its highly prized physical environment is threatened by pollution of its air and water and by urban sprawl; and while technology and banking has brought remarkable prosperity to the Research Triangle and Charlotte, other regions across the state remain mired in grinding poverty.

Weighing these and other puzzles, it becomes clear that simply understanding the state at this pivotal time in its history is a crucial challenge to be met if North Carolina is to fully realize the potential of its abundant human and natural resources.

-- from the jacket of The North Carolina Atlas

As any craftsman can tell you, a well-wrought tool is a thing of beauty, its form and functionality transcending its utilitarian nature. The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for a New...