The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America [Paperback]

Jeff Biggers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2007

Few places in the United States confound and fascinate Americans like Appalachia, yet no other area has been so markedly mischaracterized by the mass media. Stereotypes of hillbillies and rednecks repeatedly appear in representations of the region, but few, if any, of its many heroes, visionaries, or innovators are ever referenced.

Make no mistake, they are legion: from Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, to Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer who invented the first syllabary in modern times, and international divas Nina Simone and Bessie Smith, as well as writers Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, and Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Appalachia has contributed mightily to American culture — and politics. Not only did eastern Tennessee boast the country's first antislavery newspaper, Appalachians also established the first District of Washington as a bold counterpoint to British rule. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers reminds us how Appalachians have defined and shaped the United States we know today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this pleasing if imperfect study, Biggers (editor of No Lonesome Road) argues that the roots of American politics and culture are found not in Philadelphia or New York, but in Appalachia. The North Carolina Patriots, who declared themselves free of British rule long before Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, anticipated America's revolutionary, republican spirit. And if you thought the antislavery movement was born in Boston, think again. In the early 19th century, Appalachians John Rankin and Benjamin Lundy advocated emancipation; indeed, Lundy was largely responsible for winning William Lloyd Garrison to the cause. Finally, noting the importance of the Highlander Folk School in training civil rights activists, Biggers credits Appalachia with significantly advancing the cause of school desegregation. Biggers has a tendency to overwrite (Nina Simone "celebrated a Cherokee great-great-grandmother, a Scotch-Irish elation torn into her maternal past..."). Still, this attempt to rescue Appalachia from its reputation as a backwater is likely to be a hit in the region it lauds. Map. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593761511
• ISBN-13: 978-1593761516
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, educator, radio correspondent and community organizer across the US, Europe, Mexico and India. Winner of an American Book Award, a Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award and a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, his work has appeared in scores of magazines, newspapers and national public radio programs. He blogs frequently for the Huffington Post and Grist. His website is www.jeffbiggers.com

Biggers' new book, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, is forthcoming in January 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, March 29, 2006

By 

Earl of Fairfax (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America (Hardcover)

I saw this author at the Virginia Book Festival. He is a terrific speaker. I sat spellbound for all of his presentation--or reading. The book, I was afraid, might let me down, but it didn't. It is as inspiring as Biggers' speaking style. In it, the author peels off one incredible story after another--most of which I had never heard before--from the time of the Cherokee and their Renaissance until today. There are more colorful characters than a Greek tragicomedy--and they're all true life figures. Biggers' thesis is simple: You can't understand America until you understand Appalachia. After reading this book, you will be a believer.

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American History Your Teacher Never Told You About, March 17, 2006

By 

Melissa Larame (retired in Phoenix) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America (Hardcover)

I rarely read history, but the United States of Appalachia is one of those rare reads that you wished you had read when you were a student. It reads like a novel--the kind you wish would never end. Fortunately for us old-timers today, Jeff Biggers has written a book that forces us to reconsider our misperceptions about how and where American history was made, about how and why we relegate some regions to a footnote when in fact they deserve a major chapter, and shows us how our country's most mocked region has in fact been a wellspring of innovation. Sound like a dry history treatise? This book isn't. Why? Because it tells the stories of history makers, some famous and some not so famous, who have been on the cutting edge of social reforms, social rebellions and social movements for art, justice and political change.

Biggers throws out a wide net. In doing so, he breaks down the ignorant hillbilly stereotype subject by subject, movement by movement. He explains how the stereotypes grew, just as mountaineers continued to be innovators, and how the region became urbanized and urbane. He calls this paradox the great American saga. He writes about Sequoyah and the Cherokee renaissance, pioneers and the first independent community in the colonies and their role in turning the tide of the American Revolution, abolitionists and educators, labor organizers and "disorderly women" who took the jazz age to the mills and mines, pioneering civil rights organizers. He also dedicates a lot of time to music and literature, focusing on surprising figures like jazz singer Nina Simone, blues singer Bessie Smith, Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Little Lord Faunteroy author Frances H. Burnett, and contemporary writers like Cormac McCarthy.

In sum, this is American history at its best.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Loved This Book, May 7, 2006

By 

Ann Sheridan (Alabama hills) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America (Hardcover)

It got me mid-way, 'bout the time I realized that I was reading not a history book but a great American saga, as the author writers in a seat-of-your-pants chapter on the labor movement: the Great American Industrial Saga. Did you know that the first story of social realist/literary naturalism (don't know the difference myself) came out of Appalachia by a young woman, who wrote about the Iron Mills in Appalachia for The Atlantic Monthly in 1861!! And then jazz-stepping cotton mill girls driving their Model T's down the mountain roads to save their lovers...and then the coal miners: Which Side Are You On? This book goes on like this. One great story after another (only the early American history bogged down on me, but hey, we gotta start somewhere). The United States of Appalachia is an unusual book...the kind that makes you rethink every stereotype you have planted in your brain, but more importantly, the kind that makes you rethink American history completely.

As many other reviews have noted, there is a common question that keeps coming into your head as you read this book: Why have I never heard about this? Why didn't I know that the New York Times was owned and led and saved by an Appalachian publisher? Why didn't I know that mountaineers turned the tide of the American Revolution at Kings Mountain? Why didn't I know that young civil rights students learned We Shall Overcome at an Appalachian school? Why didn't I know that Nina Simone, that tempestous jazz icon, came from the backwoods and introduced House of the Rising Sun (not the silly Animals or Bob Dylan)? Why didn't I know that Pearl Buck wrote a memoir on West Virginia that was instrumental in her Nobel laureate?

Read this book. I loved it. You will, too.