Published by the Kentucky Historical Society and distributed by the University Press of Kentucky The history and beauty of the Bluegrass State come alive in words and pictures, as this volume chronicles the Kentucky experience in all its variety. Rare black-and white historic images combine with more than two hundred modern color photographs to complement a narrative written by some of the commonwealth's most celebrated wordsmiths: Thomas D. Clark, George Ella Lyon, John Ed Pearce, Gerald L. Smith, Michal Smith-Mello, and Michael T. Childress. Photographs by Dan Dry of Louisville, Kentucky. excerpt: Where are you from? ""Kentucky,"" I say. I'm from a place where people still stop for funerals, where they know who your grandmother was, where they tell stories at Corn Island at the state park at the dinner table where they pass on their youngest's outgrown clothes and bring a casserole as soon as someone dies. --George Ella Lyon

Kentucky is well recognized for bourbon, bluegrass, and the Kentucky Derby. When thinking of covered bridges, the commonwealth is not the state that readily comes to mind. Many of Kentucky's covered bridges were built by such men as Wernwag, Bower, Carothers, Day, Stone, and Long, but many of the names were never recorded or have been lost to time. Kentucky once was home to the longest single-span wooden bridge in the world and to a covered bridge through which a Civil War battle was fought. Time, arson, progress, neglect, and misguided maintenance have spelled the demise of the majority of these structures. Readers of this volume might be surprised to learn that Kentucky once claimed more than 700 timbered tunnels and that over 50 of these survived well into the 1950s. Equally surprising, the commonwealth is still home to 13 of these structures.

The first comprehensive history of the state since the publication of Thomas D. Clark's landmark History of Kentucky over sixty years ago. A New History of Kentucky brings the Commonwealth to life, from Pikeville to the Purchase, from Covington to Corbin, this account reveals Kentucky's many faces and deep traditions. Lowell Harrison, professor emeritus of history at Western Kentucky University, is the author of many books, including George Rogers Clark and the War in the West, The Civil War in Kentucky, Kentucky's Road to Statehood, Lincoln of Kentucky, and Kentucky's Governors.

Kentucky Bluegrass Country by R. Gerald Alvey Horse breeding, the cultures of tobacco and bourbon, the forms of architecture, the codes of the hunt, the traditions of gambling and dueling, convivial celebrations, regional foodways-all of these are ingredients in the folklife of the Inner Bluegrass Region that is the focus of this fascinating book. R. Gerald Alvey (retired) was a professor of folklore and English at the University of Kentucky.