Howard E. Covington Jr. of Greensboro is the author or coauthor of more than fifteen works of North Carolina history and biography. Among his books are Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress and Outrageous Ambition; The North Carolina Century: Tar Heels Who Made A Difference, 1900-2000; Favored by Fortune: George W. Watts and the Hills of Durham; Once Upon A City: Greensboro, North Carolina’s Second Century; and Lady on the Hill: How Biltmore Estate Became An American Icon. In, 2004, Favored by Fortune received the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s Ragan Old North State Award for best non-fiction by a North Carolina writer. In 2010, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library published his The Good Government Man: Albert Coates and the Early Years of the Institute of Government as the first volume in its Coates University Leadership Series.