This work addresses how southern West Virginia's complex and often chaotic history still impacts key aspects of modern-day life for Mountaineers. At its center are fundamental elements of late 19th and early 20th century Appalachian existence such as the predominance of subsistence farming, the coming of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of company towns, growing coal company influence, and the resultant expansion of political corruption. It examines how the region's Appalachian culture and identity have adapted to and been affected by these factors as well as how stereotypical perceptions held by those outside the region have created both opportunities and barriers to modernization for southern West Virginians.

Combining new empirical information about political behavior with a close examination of the capacity of the state’s government, this third edition of West Virginia Politics and Government offers a comprehensive and pointed study of the ability of the state’s government to respond to the needs of a largely rural and relatively low-income population.

In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) undertook Operation Dixie, an initiative to recruit industrial workers in the American South. Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf plumb rarely used archival sources and rich oral histories to explore the CIO's fraught encounter with the evangelical Protestantism and religious culture of southern whites. The authors' nuanced look at working class religion reveals how laborers across the surprisingly wide evangelical spectrum interpreted their lives through their faith. Factors like conscience, community need, and lived experience led individual preachers to become union activists and mill villagers to defy the foreman and minister alike to listen to organizers. As the authors show, however, all sides enlisted belief in the battle. In the end, the inability of northern organizers to overcome the suspicion with which many evangelicals viewed modernity played a key role in Operation Dixie's failure, with repercussions for labor and liberalism that are still being felt today. Identifying the role of the sacred in the struggle for southern economic justice, and placing class as a central aspect in southern religion, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South provides new understandings of how whites in the region wrestled with the options available to them during a crucial period of change and possibility.

Modern mainstream journalism faces a very real disturbance of its foundational premise that credible news is gathered and articulated from an objective stance. This volume offers new examinations of how the traditional notion of objectivity is changing as professional journalists grapple with a rapidly evolving news terrain--one that has become increasingly crowded by those with no journalistic credentials. Examining historical antecedents, current dilemmas, international aspects, and theoretical considerations, contributors make the case that the journalist's impulse to hold onto objectivity, and to ignore the increasing subjectivities to which citizens are attuned, actually contributes to the news media's disconnect from today's news consumer. Revealing how traditional journalism needs to incorporate "post-objective" stances, these essays stimulate further thought and conversation about news with a view in both theory and practice.

Stories from doctors, nurses, and therapists dealing on a daily basis with the opioid crisis in Appalachia should be heartbreaking. Yet those told here also inspire with practical advice on how to assist those in addiction, from a grass-roots to a policy level. Readers looking for ways to combat the crisis will find suggestions alongside laughter, tears, and sometimes rage. Each author brings the passion of their profession and the personal losses they have experienced from addiction, and posits solutions and harm reduction with positivity, grace, and even humor. Authors representing seven states from northern, Coalfields, and southern Appalachia relate personal encounters with patients or providers who changed them forever. This is a history document, showing how we got here; an evidenced indictment of current policies failing those who need them most; an affirmation that Appalachia solves its own problems; and a collection of suggestions for best practice moving forward.

Native Americans have occupied the mountains of northwestern North Carolina for around 14,000 years. This book tells the story of their lives, adaptations, responses to climate change, and ultimately, the devastation brought on by encounters with Europeans. After a brief introduction to archaeology, the book covers each time period, chapter by chapter, beginning with the Paleoindian period in the Ice Age and ending with the arrival of Daniel Boone in 1769, with descriptions and interpretations of archaeological evidence for each time period. Each chapter begins with a fictional vignette to kindle the reader's imaginings of ancient human life in the mountains, and includes descriptions and numerous images of sites and artifacts discovered in Boone, North Carolina, and the surrounding region.

From his birth in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1947, to his 2020 album featuring the music of Lee Hammons, Wayne Howard has lived an exceptionally creative life. He seemed to be eternally present at fiddle festivals, involved in the creative forces working to preserve Southern Mountain music. In 1969, he relocated to West Virginia and was introduced to the Hammons family by Dwight Diller. Howard then recorded Lee, Sherman, Burl, and Maggie Hammons playing music and telling stories. Howard then became a professional computer programmer, a vintage book collector, and a woodworker, before turning to writing about the Hammons family, and producing CDs of their stories and music. This biography follows the threads of music and folklore through Howard's life, celebrating his profound knowledge that does much to sustain the interest of those who seek out Appalachian tunes, songs, and stories.