This was a nice book for learning or getting refreshed on snippets of Outer Banks history. The vignets spanned the centuries, from 1584 to 2005, and included a nice variety of information about life on the Outer Banks over the centuries. ( )

A brief history of the Outer Banks of North Carolina in twenty-six short non-fiction stories. The highlights for me were:

*Blackbeard's death
*Building the first lighthouse on Hatteras
*Trials and tribulations of the Wright Brothers on the islands until the first flight, in 1903
*A mystery ship stranded on the shoals
*The sinking of the first German U boat in WWII (maybe that was the first German U boat sunk in the US)
*Finding the wreck of the Civil War ironclad warship, Monitor
*Corralling and protecting the wild horse population
*The Lost Colony
*Moving the Cape Hatteras lighthouse 1/2 mile inland
*A massive whale beaching

There were many more that were pretty interesting, but those were my favorite stories.

I'm not a huge fan of nonfiction, but this book was very readable. It was a little dry, but by keeping each story to about five pages, the author kept my attention enough so that I read most of this book in one sitting. I really liked that the later chapters were based on interviews of people who were there. If you're from the area, or you're planning on visiting, this would be a great book to read. ( )