When Ashe County Memorial Hospital opened in November 1941, it was the realization of a dream for the poor, sparsely populated county in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina. Building a hospital is a major undertaking for any community at any time. Accomplishing this in the waning days of the Great Depression and on the brink of World War II, while scant local resources were taxed by catastrophic floods and severe snows, was a remarkable feat of community organization. This is the story of the generations of supporters, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel and others whose lives are interwoven with regional health care and the planning, building and operation of (the "new") Ashe Memorial Hospital. This legacy, brought to life through 114 photographs and personal interviews with 97 individuals, traces the development of health care in a remote Appalachian community, from the days of folk remedies and midwives, to horseback doctors and early infirmaries, to the technological advances and outreach efforts of today's Ashe Memorial Hospital.

In the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, along the Virginia and Tennessee borders, sits rural, mountainous Ashe County. When an act of the North Carolina General Assembly created Ashe in 1799, the county had previously been claimed by four other counties, the short-lived State of Franklin, and even France, based on treaty claims that the New River drained into the Mississippi. This work is a reprint of the first-ever complete history of the county, originally commissioned by the Ashe County Research Association, written by Arthur Lloyd Fletcher and published in 1963. Chapters cover early explorers, the ill-fated War of Regulation, the county's creation in 1799, the county's role in the Civil War and both World Wars, religion, education, industry, community leaders and newspapers, recreation, and folklore, among other topics.

The effects of a disaster on healthcare can range from conditions that immediately besiege the system with large numbers of patients, to catastrophes that strain its long-term sustainability. Nurses, as frontline health professionals, must have an understanding of the situations they may face before, during and after a disaster and they must develop the skills and strategies to provide effective and immediate care. International Disaster Nursing is the first truly comprehensive and internationally focused resource to address the diversity of issues and myriad scenarios that nurses and other health personnel could encounter during a disaster event. This text defines the many roles of the nurse within a multidisciplinary team, and aids the implementation of the community's disaster plans in a crisis. With an alarming increase in the occurrence of disasters in the last decade, International Disaster Nursing is the hallmark text in the field.