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John Shelton and Dale Volberg Reed

John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science for twelve years and helped to found the university’s Center for the Study of the American South. He has written or edited eighteen books, four of them with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed.

John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed live in Chapel Hill, on the fault line between the eastern and Piedmont styles of North Carolina barbecue.  John prefers the former and Dale the latter. Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue is the fourth of the books they have written or edited together.

Ten Things We Can’t Do Without

  1. North Carolina barbecue (of course)
  2. Annual trips to England
  3. Seeing our granddaughters (6 and 8 — want to see their pictures?)
  4. Choral music (ideally 16th century)
  5. Mexican silver jewelry and tableware
  6. Ancestry.com
  7. Proper martinis (with olives, not too dry)
  8. American Empire furniture
  9. 1950s rock and roll
  10. One another (corny, but true: 50th anniversary next year)

John Shelton and Dale Volberg Reed's contributions: