Customer Reviews

Appalachia: A History

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My fascination with Appalachia's terrain and people has been growing for years, but I was finally prompted to read this book at a music festival in the western mountains of Virginia. When I asked a local woman to show me how to do a kind of clog-dancing common in the region, she answered (very sweetly) "I'm not sure I could teach it to you -- it's a mountain thing."

This book might be the best single way to explore the historical depths of what that "mountain thing" is. It takes us from the original Cherokee (and other) residents and their sorrowful history; through the first settlement by Europeans; through the very complicated Civil War period; through the pillage of the region by coal companies. logging companies and others; and into our own time, with Appalachia imagined on one extreme as America's Third World, and on the other as a folk paradise of folk-music, woodcraft and quilt-making.

The sections on the Civil War era were especially enlightening for me. I grew up thinking of central Appalachia as just another part of The South, hence rebel territory. More recently, I was taught that Appalachia was an island of Unionism, or at least neutrality, in the midst of the Confederacy. The reality is much more complicated and sadder. Williams carefully reveals the many warring sentiments that made mountain life a true 'civil war', with neighbors fighting neighbors, towns preyed on in alternation by Confederate and Federal troops, bands of free-lance marauders, and guerilla armies of every variety. More than one young mountain man was drafted into both the Confederate and Union armies in succession. A gruesome story, one that makes the violence of 'Cold Mountain' seem almost tame.

I close with a small complaint: this book could use more, and better, MAPS. John Alexander Williams very nicely explains how the region's layout has affected its entire history -- but to follow what he was saying I found myself running to the atlas many times. Several good, detailed, relief maps would have made a big difference.

It took me a while to read this book:

a. because I found what he was writing about so interesting that I kept going back to the footnotes to see where his information came from, and

b. because so much of what he writes about I know to be true from my own experience, my own reading or from the experiences of friends and family.

It just rings true to me.

I don't know if every person who grows up in Appalachia thinks about what it means to be Appalachian, but as soon as he or she leaves the mountains (in my case I only had to go to college in Lexington, VA), it's going to mean something to everybody else. Particularly if that person is from West Virginia, where just saying what state you're from betrays your hillbilly status.

I spent the first 20 years of my life being ashamed of being from West Virginia and trying to leave it. I spent the next 20 years not only making peace with it, but coming to love it.

Througout Williams' history, he questions the notion of Appalachian "otherness," and the reader may think him agnostic on the subject, or perhaps a holder of the belief that its otherness never existed. But by the end of the book, it appears he fears for its survival as an "other" -- surely a view we share.

An expansive work that contains many insightful views into one of the most studied, but misunderstood American regions. While the book is titled "A history", it is as much a history of "how" Appalachia is studied as it is a straight history of the area.

The author's central theory is that Appalachia was, and is, an internal colony of the United States, with its natural resources of coal and timber shipped out, and almost all finished goods shipped in. Few of the factories and industry that use Appalachia's coal and timber are within its borders. As a result its economic system closely resembles a colony, with northern interests reaping the benefits of Appalachia's riches.

The author claims that Appalachia's identity was largely constructed by outsiders who wanted to either exploit or save its people. While the book is extensively researched, most of the analysis and history are the author's thoughts or those of other academics. The voice of the Appalachian people is strangely absent. In addition, the history of the area post-1970 is pretty thin and is more about the people who study Appalachia, than the regions itself. The 1980s-present is barely covered at all.

Be aware, the author has little good to say about private corporations, free markets, or the wealthy. The U.S. Government, the TVA, and the Park Service are also painted in a poor light. Everything that is wrong with Appalachia appears to be somebody else's fault. Once I realized his views, I was able to dive into the books theories and constructs, which were well worth the effort.

Despite a few quirks, I learned much about a region of America that I realized I knew little about, and what I knew was wrong and invented by outsiders. The author's love for the region is evident.

Any book that starts out at the Wytheville VA bus station and then goes back in time several hundred years is all right by me.
This is a large and detailed examination of an area (whose precise boundaries have always been a matter of some dispute) as a unique cultural and geopolitical construct, and I found it compelling and revealing.
I went to school at the northern edge of Appalachia and now live off the southern edge, and the land in between has always held a fascination for me.
And by the way, the cover's beautiful.

I bought this book for a graduate class I was taking and while it was a little dry at times it still contained a wealth of information on the Appalachian region and their struggles and hardships. It gives you a good perspective into the lives of a people who are normally looked down upon for being viewed as little more than "backwoods hillbillies" and lets you see these truly remarkable people for the hard workers and cultured beings that they are.

I was born in Fort Gay WVa.1927 and grew up in south-western Va. Mount Rogers area in the 30s. Life in Troutdale Va.was at least 50 years behind the rest of civilization.I lived the life of the pioneers no electricity, no indoor plumbing, subsistence farming,hunting wild game, trapping and trout fishing in cold mountain streams.I didn't know this was Appalachia until I left it to go to war. "Appalachia a History" Fills in the gaps between myth and reality in the lives of Appalachian people in a detail that is absent in other history books.For me "Appalachia a History" is a nostalgic adventure of my self discovery.

This book is a must for anyone tracing their forebears or just wanting to understand the unique cultures of this area. I am most pleased with this book.

"Appalachia: A History" by John Alexander Williams is an incredible and fascinating treatise on the Appalachian region. It is, for certain, a worthy description of a region and population that has weathered repeated and severe exploitations by a long list of the assailants, including government, the extraction industries, missionaries, Reconstructionists, assorted myopic "do-gooders', not-so-expert experts, unions, counterculturists, Progressives, Globalists, environmentalists and illegal aliens. Though Americans have traditionally wanted to view the people and problems of Applachia as something "peculiar", the Truth is that much of the country is a fair fit for that mold - admit it or not.
Williams addresses and illuminates errors of the stereotyping we have inflicted upon Appalachia since colonial times and shows clearly that some of those labels would have been more accurately applied in some surprising places outside "the mountains". He also illustrates that there is no real ONE "Appalachia" but that in the area generally broadbrushed as "Appalachia" there are myriad differences of terrain, culture, demographics, religious focus and social strata and functions.
This truly is an enjoyable and enlightening book. But, in the end, an alert reader will come away from "Appalachia: A History" with the realization that many of the things that were wrong in the history of "Appalachia" were, and ARE, very wrong in many areas of our country today, especially in our areas with farming/ranching economies.

I don't know if it's systematic exploitation to blame or if people just haven't had good business ideas in Appalachia. I understand background and environment driving opportunity, but other parts of the same country have so much and maybe the geography isn't to blame. I just don't know what to make if it. This book is good but also very sad.