Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices provides nearly 220 years' worth of words from the men and women who created and nurtured UNC-Chapel Hill.

Readers will hear from Hinton James, who walked from Wilmington to become UNC's first student. They'll hear from early female and black students and from those who weathered the 1960s.

Decade by decade, campus icons like Frank Porter Graham, Dean Smith, and William C. Friday have their say. So do illustrious alumni ranging from Zeb Vance to Thomas Wolfe to Andy Griffith to Phil Ford. So does even notorious UNC critic Jesse Helms.

Perhaps most entertaining are the off-beat narratives from people like the early professor who tried to discipline students for stealing horses and hurling furniture at faculty, and the future chancellor who didn't graduate on time because he flunked the swimming test.