Customer Reviews

West Virginia: A History (States and the Nation)

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"West Virginia" is a fast reading introduction to the history of the Mountain State. Beginning with a brief section on the region from Revolutionary times, the book quickly moves on to the Civil War era which gave birth to West Virginia statehood.

The Unionist sentiment in the Western part of Virginia resulted, in 1863, in the only case of succession of a portion of one state from another in American history. The Civil War in West Virginia is portrayed both in its military and political aspects.

Williams tells the story of the evolution of West Virginia from the political, economic and social perspectives. The fabled Hatfield-MCcoy feud is given ample attention, as is the Hatfield who served his state as governor and United States Senator.

In a state with an undistinguished political history, Williams introduces the reader to a series of governors, senators and political bosses who struggled with absentee landowners, rail and coal concerns and labor leaders to lead West Virginia through the 19th and 20th centuries.

The story of West Virginia is a story of hope and despair, promise and danger, fulfillment and disappointment. Through it all Williams presents its story as a drama, partly heroic and partly tragic. Not a partisan Mountaineer booster, Williams tells the good with the bad. For anyone wishing to know the history of our country, state by state, this book fills in one piece of the American mosaic in a most pleasant fashion.

I feel like I'm cheating the writer by giving it only four stars, because this book's great strength is its biggest flaw: It's a very good read. This is a broad outline of West Virginia history with some of the more important events colored in a bit. It's a bit over 200 pages and reads a like a novel.

I wish this had been the text we used in West Virginia history class back in junior high in the instead of that dreadful, trivia-laden textbook.

It's divided into chapters named after some of West Virginia places where major events in state history took place, (Point Pleasant, Harpers Ferry, Droop Mountain, Tug Fork, Paint Creek, Hawks Nest, Buffalo Creek) but the chapters cover far more in geography and time than the events that made the places famous. The Droop Mountain chapter, for instance covers not only that battle, but most of the Civil War and statehood period.

So it's not all-inclusive (Jim Comstock tried to do that with his West Virginia encyclopedia), but that's what makes it a pleasure to read and not a chore. One night when I couldn't sleep I picked up Williams' book and started in the middle, in the Paint Creek chapter. I was more than 30 pages into the book and into the next chapter before I could sleep.

239 pages long and written by John A. Williams, "West Virginia: a history" was originally published in 1976 by W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. as "West Virginia: A Bicentennial History". It is remarkable in that it is not slow moving or boring even for those who find its subject matter interesting. This book reads more like a novel, and I found it quite compelling all the way through. "West Virginia: a history" tells as thorough a story of the Mountain State as any book does. It tells a story of joyous triumph but more often than not one of bitterness and hardship. West Virginia has many dark aspects to its history, and this book does not shy away from them. It is ironic that West Virginia was allowed to secede from the already seceding Commonwealth of Virginia in order to remain in the United States. If secession truly were illegal and wrong, West Virginia would not have been allowed to exist, regardless of who won the Civil War. It is also ironic that as the book points out, many of West Virginia's constituent counties were not interested in leaving Virginia but got dragged along anyway. Beginning in the colonial days of the Commonwealth, continuing into the Civil War and statehood years, and ending just after the final end of the Vietnam War, "West Virginia: a history" is an excellent and fascinating book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in West Virginia and how it came to be.