5 N.C. political books I love (and what’s next on my list)

These books offer the kind of insight you can’t find in headlines or history books

You’ve probably noticed this by now, but when I write about North Carolina politics, I like to bring in a little history. In a fast-growing state, there are a lot of people who don’t have enough context to understand what’s happening now.

But it’s also easy to forget that the past had texture. You might read a few paragraphs about an event in a modern news article, or skim through a high-level overview in a textbook. But that doesn’t capture how it really felt. These things played out slowly, over time, shaped by real people with competing ambitions, half-formed ideas, and, occasionally, a stroke of brilliance.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks as I’ve written my newspaper columns. I knew that Robert Morgan resigned as attorney general to run for Senate in 1974. But I couldn’t find much about why. His speeches were vague. The background was thin. Fortunately, I was able to talk to Rufus Edmisten, who lived it — and it brought the whole era into sharper focus.

Th…