Explore the vast range of titles available.

During the Civil War, there were throughout the Union explosions of resistance to the war -from the deadly Draft Riots in New York City to other, less well-known outbreaks. In Deserter Country, Robert Sandow explores one of these least known \"inner civil wars\", the widespread, sometimes violent opposition in the Appalachian lumber country of Pennsylvania.Sparsely settled, these mountains were home to divided communities that provided safe-haven for opponents of the war. The dissent of mountain folk reflected their own marginality in the face of rapidly increasing exploitation of timber resources by big firms, as well as partisan debates over loyalty. One of the few studies of the northern Appalachians, this book draws revealing parallels to the War in the southern mountains, exploring the roots of rural protest in frontier development, the market economy, military policy, partisan debate, and everyday resistance. Sandow also sheds new light on the party politics of rural resistance, rejecting easy depictions of war-opponents as traitors and malcontents for a more nuanced and complicated study of the class, economic upheaval, and localism.

Appalachia faces overwhelming challenges that plague many rural areas across the country, including poorly funded schools, stagnant economic development, corrupt political systems, poverty, and drug abuse. Its citizens, in turn, have often been the target of unkind characterizations depicting them as illiterate or backward. Despite entrenched social and economic disadvantages, the region is also known for its strong sense of culture, language, and community. In this innovative volume, a multidisciplinary team of both established and rising scholars challenge Appalachian stereotypes through an examination of language and rhetoric. Together, the contributors offer a new perspective on Appalachia and its literacy, hoping to counteract essentialist or class-based arguments about the region's people, and reexamine past research in the context of researcher bias. Featuring a mix of traditional scholarship and personal narratives,Rereading Appalachiaassesses a number of pressing topics, including the struggles of first-generation college students and the pressure to leave the area in search of higher-quality jobs, prejudice toward the LGBT community, and the emergence of Appalachian and Affrilachian art in urban communities. The volume also offers rich historical perspectives on issues such as the intended and unintended consequences of education activist Cora Wilson Stewart's campaign to promote literacy at the Kentucky Moonlight Schools. A call to arms for those studying the heritage and culture of Appalachia, this timely collection provides fresh perspectives on the region, its people, and their literacy beliefs and practices.

Long before the term \"Affrilachia\" became popular, Victoria A. Casey McDonald spent decades gathering the stories of her family and neighbors in North Carolina's Jackson County. Her book, Just Over the Hill: Black Appalachians in Jackson County, Western North Carolina, presents a collection of narratives that illuminate the lives of African Americans in the region. These stories include her grandmother's, Amanda Thomas, who was born into bondage. The biographies and histories continue through the twentieth century and feature educators, soldiers, factory workers, ministers, athletes, and other community members. Originally published in 2012, this edition of Just Over the Hill with an afterword Marie T. Cochran continues to speak for these resilient individuals to generations to come.

Appalachians All intertwines the histories of three communities-Knoxville with its urban life, Cades Cove with its farming, logging, and tourism legacies, and the Clearfork Valley with its coal production-to tell a larger story of East Tennessee and its inhabitants. Combining a perceptive account of how industrialization shaped developments in these communities since the Civil War with a heartfelt reflection on Appalachian identity, Mark Banker provides a significant new regional history with implications that extend well beyond East Tennessee's boundaries. Writing with the keen eye of a native son who left the area only to return years later, Banker uses elements of his own autobiography to underscore the ways in which East Tennesseans, particularly \"successful\" urban dwellers, often distance themselves from an Appalachian identity. This understandable albeit regrettable response, Banker suggests, diminishes and demeans both the individual and region, making stereotypically \"Appalachian\" conditions self-perpetuating. Whether exploring grassroots activism in the Clearfork Valley, the agrarian traditions and subsequent displacement of Cades Cove residents, or Knoxvillians' efforts to promote trade, tourism, and industry, Banker's detailed historical excursions reveal not only a profound richness and complexity in the East Tennessee experience but also a profound interconnectedness. Synthesizing the extensive research and revisionist interpretations of Appalachia that have emerged over the last thirty years, Banker offers a new lens for constructively viewing East Tennessee and its past. He challenges readers to reconsider ideas that have long diminished the region and to re-imagine Appalachia. And ultimately, while Appalachians All speaks most directly to East Tennesseans and other Appalachian residents, it also carries important lessons for any reader seeking to understand the crucial connections between history, self, and place.

In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Rebecca R. Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment. Removing Mountains demonstrates that the paradox that faces this community—forced to destroy their land to make a wage—raises important questions related to the environment, American national identity, place, and white working-class masculinity.

Sarah Beth Childers grew up listening to stories. She heard them riding to school with her mother, playing Yahtzee in her Granny's nicotine cloud, walking to the bowling alley with her grandfather, and eating casseroles at the family reunions she attended every year. In a thoughtful, humorous voice born of Appalachian storytelling, Childers brings to life in these essays events that affected the entire region: large families that squeezed into tiny apartments during the Great Depression, a girl who stepped into a rowboat from a second-story window during Huntington's 1937 flood, brothers who were whisked away to World War II and Vietnam, and a young man who returned home from the South Pacific and worked his life away as a railroad engineer. Childers uses these family tales to make sense of her personal journey and find the joy and clarity that often emerge after the earth shakes terribly beneath us.

This charming account of life in Appalachia at the turn of the century is one of the three most important books from the early twentieth century that, as Dwight Billings writes in his foreword, have \"had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about Appalachia and, indeed, on the fact that we commonly believe that such a place and people can be readily identified.\" Originally published in 1924, it was advertised as a \"racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure and the delicious humor of vigorously human people.\" James Watt Raine, professor of English literature and later head of the English and drama departments at Berea College from 1906 until his retirement in 1939, provides eyewitness accounts of mountain speech and folksinging, education, religion, community, politics, and farming. In a conscious effort to dispel the negative stereotype of the drunken, slothful, gun-toting hillbilly prone to violence, Raine presents positive examples from his own experiences among the region's native inhabitants.

On a muggy, late August afternoon in 1936, somewhere along the banks of Greasy Creek, Life found Grace -- walking the dusty mile between work and home in a brand new pair of leather kitten-heeled pumps, blond curls bouncing in the sun. Two weeks later, Lifie Jay Preston and Grace Mollette married, a union that lasted until their deaths fifty-eight years later. There was something about them, their daughter Linda would discover, a kind of radiance and love of living that would mark them in the memories of every person they encountered -- a song that resonates years after their passing. Songs of Life and Graceis their story, told by the daughter whose own life grew out of their loving ministries and Appalachian sensibilities. Linda Scott DeRosier, the celebrated author of Creeker: A Woman's Journey, draws on family letters and lore, interviews, and her own recollections to reach a better understanding of her parents and the families that formed them both. Along the way, she introduces an unforgettable cast of characters: the formidable Grandma Emmy; Uncle Burns, an infamous ladies' man; helpless and simple Aunt Jo; and gentle Pop Pop, who could peel an apple in one long, unbroken spiral. A stirring, honest look at Appalachia and a tribute to the unbreakable bonds of family,Songs of Life and Graceestablishes DeRosier as one of the most vital and exciting new voices of the American South.

On a muggy, late August afternoon in 1936, somewhere along the banks of Greasy Creek, Life found Grace -- walking the dusty mile between work and home in a brand new pair of leather kitten-heeled pumps, blond curls bouncing in the sun.

Riding on Comets  is the true story of an only child growing up in a working-class family during the 1950s and ‘60s.  As the family storyteller, Cat Pleska whispers and shouts about her life growing up around savvy, strong women and hard-working, hard-drinking men. Unlike many family stories set within Appalachia, this story provides an uncommon glimpse into this region: not coal, but an aluminum plant; not hollers, but small-town America; not hillbillies, but a hard-working family with traditional values.  From the dinner table, to the back porch, to the sprawling countryside, Cat Pleska reveals the sometimes tender, sometimes frightening education of a child who listens at the knees of these giants. She mimics and learns every nuance, every rhythm—how they laugh, smoke, cuss, fight, love, and tell stories—as she unwittingly prepares to carry their tales forward, their words and actions forever etched in her mind. And finally, she discovers a life story of her own.