4:30 p.m. Reception, North Carolina Collection Gallery
5:30 p.m. Talk, Pleasants Family Assembly Room

When Edward Kidder Graham became president of the University of North Carolina in 1913, he articulated an ambitious vision of excellence in teaching, research and service to the state that he would not live to see fulfilled. His death during the influenza pandemic of 1918 left others to implement and expand on those dreams. Graham’s successor as president, Harry Woodburn Chase, did just that, transforming the University from a small state institution to a major research university on the national stage.

Author Howard E. Covington Jr. will speak about the intertwined fates and legacy of Graham and Chase as he explores them in “Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina Under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase.” The book is the second volume in the Coates University Leadership Series from the University Libraries, commissioned thanks to support from the Albert and Gladys Coates Endowment Fund for the North Carolina Collection. The University of North Carolina Press is the distributor.

Covington is the author or co-author of more than fifteen works of North Carolina history and biography, including "The Good Government Man: Albert Coates and the Early Years of the Institute of Government.” The book was the first volume in the Coates Leadership Series. Covington's “Favored by Fortune: George W. Watts & the Hills of Durham,” also published in partnership with the University Libraries, received the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association's Ragan Old North State Award for best non-fiction by a North Carolina writer.

This program is co-sponsored by the Carolina Center for Public Service. Attendees will have an opportunity to purchase copies of the book and have them signed by the author following the talk.

The University of North Carolina Press is the distributor for the Coates University Leadership series and makes open access versions of the book availalble for reading and download at no charge.

More information about the program: libraryevents@unc.edu, (919) 962-4207