“North Carolina, the Old North State,” Simpson begins, “is an ocean wave breaking, a fiddler sawing away in the mountain night, a hundred Ayrshire milk cows lowing in Piedmont dawn, the sound burst of a R3 organ and joyful voices raised in a song beyond the stained-glass windows of a city church…From sea-level to sky-high, from pickles to peaches and from cabbage to corn bread, here’s to the land: North Carolina.” As a former policy consultant to major Democratic candidates and officeholders in North Carolina and other states, McCorkle wonders, “Why has North Carolina remained stuck on the cusp of turning into a solidly blue state?” Each in his own way, Simpson and McCorkle illuminate for educators, business leaders, and public officials the state’s enduring natural assets and the ripple…