Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Beautiful writing, page after page, that gets to the heart of the American experience. What impressed me was the range of material. The author starts with Martha Graham and ends with Edward Abbey, and weaves in famous and should-be famous persons from music, the Cherokee, the pioneers, turn-of-the century icons, to the 1960s. Jeff Biggers is an old fashioned renaissance story-teller. He can go from one theme to the next with real ease. I think this book is going to surprise a lot of people. It surprised me.

Just as I was planning to write my review I saw another review pop up, which is the opposite of my feelings about The United States of Appalachia. The brilliance of Biggers' book is the richness he mines in the region, beyond the usual Scotch-Irish cliches. But, he hardly ignores the Scotch-Irish, or Germans, or Welsh, for that matter. Biggers dedicates two chapters, stretching across 100 years, to the educational accomplishments of the Scotch-Irish, such as Samuel Doak, founder of the first college in the mountains in 1780, and Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School. He shows how the Scotch-Irish united with other frontiermen at the Battle of Kings Mountain. He dedicates two chapters to German immigrants like the Ochs family, that would take over the New York Times, and the Reuthers, who became the nation's great labor leaders. And in music, he sets the record straight on the role of the German zither, and the unique blend of Scoth-Irish fiddles with African American banjos, guitars and blues. Biggers doesn't snub Loretta Lynn or Dolly Parton--he shows the rich mix of their music. And he doesn't give Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin more than a sentence or two--not four pages--as the negative reviewer strangely reports--but he does show how they were influenced by Appalachians, which seems to be the theme of this book. The United States of Appalachia is a great accomplishment and Biggers deserves a lot of credit for his exhaustive research.

I have lived more than half of my life in the midwest but will always be a southerner at heart. Too many people think of the south as one big inbred Dogpatch. I feel this book reminds everyone that the south was once the standard of culture and refinement for the whole nation. Thanks for setting the records stright Mr. Biggers!

I agree with most of ther reviewers below. Jeff Biggers has simply shattered the backwards stereotypes with a stunning blow of history and done a lot of research to show the amazing folks that came out of Appalachia. He paints a broad canvass. He's not stuck on one group. He loves them all. In fact, I'd call this book a love letter to Appalachia and a reminder of their importance to America.

Barry Vance's review below is dead wrong. Biggers weaves one tale after another about the Scotch Irish, as other reviewers have noted. And besides, Vance completely confuses his singer. Biggers wrote about Bessie Smith, from Chattanooga, and Nina Simone, from Tryon, North Carolina, not Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin. He just says they were influenced by Smith and Simone. Get your singers right, Mr. Vance!

As I sit here writing this, the blasting from a nearby Mountain Top Removal job sends shivers through my ancestral home. Here in the same county that gave us Carter Woodson, the father of the effort to uplift the vibrant, if oft-suppressed history of African-Americans history in this nation, the history of all of Appalachia is subjected to a very real threat in the present.

Jeff Biggers has performed a tremendous service for our threatened region. He has shown, via examples and history from culture, politics, social unreast and art, how Appalachian people have been the primary agents of change and growth in a nation that, when it isn't lampooning them, assaults them as a Third World people inside the national confines of the United States.

American "freedom" began here, at Kings Mountain and Tu-Endi-Wei. Slavery's end began here. The demand for dignity and respect for working people began here. America's only native-born musical form first found its voice here. Yet, as I write this, more high explosives are used EVERY DAY on Appalachian people and their communities than are used on Iraq, all of which Mr. Biggers makes clear in compelling, eminently readable prose.

Mr. Biggers has done his homework, and has done it with a sense of urgency born of the knowledge that everything Appalachia is may easily become a matter of the past, with no future to speak of.

Love your country? Thank a hillbilly. Glad to learn about it? Thank Jeff Biggers.

Bravo, Jeff Biggers! And thank-you. This book should be on the shelf of every high school and college in America.

if I only had this book 15 years ago when I went away for college. I had to endure every hillbilly stereotype in the book. what I like about this book is that Biggers isn't romantic. he deals head on with the redneck issues and looks at both sides. the chapter on the role of Appalachians in the Civil Rights Movement--Myles Horton at Highlander Folk Schoool is amazing--turtns the racist hillbilly image on its head.

Give this book to anyone who loves Deliverance.

one thing. one review says that Biggers bends the rules and includes places outside of Appalachia, like Gastonia, North Carolina. That's not really true. He actually shows the role of Appalachians who went down to the mills in the lowlands and led the strikes. such as Ella Wiggins.

This book absolutely blew my mind. I will never view Appalachia in the same light. It completely shatters the backwater stereotypes and explains the myths that still linger today. It also profiles some surprising innovators I had never connected with Appalachia. What do Cormac McCarthy, Nina Simone, Bessie Smith, Willa Cather, Adolph Ochs (the publisher who set the NY Times on its path for world acclaim), Booker T. Washington, Walter Reuther, Pearl Buck, Edward Abbey, Sequoyah and Rebecca Harding Davis have in common? They all come from Appalachia.

Written like a page-turning novel, the book weaves the stories of Appalachians who have been in the forefront of American history. In fact, it is almost a blow by blow account of how Appalachians have influenced or shaped pivotal movements in American history, from the Battle of Kings Mountain that turned the tide of the American Revolution in the South to Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement. The author's theme--that if we are to understand America, we must first understand Appalachia--becomes so clear with each chapter.

This fascinating book should be required reading for all Americans.