Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau played host to some of the most dramatic military maneuvering of the Civil War. As Federal forces sought to capitalize on the capture of Nashville, they moved into a region split by the most vicious guerrilla warfare outside Missouri. The bitter conflict affected thousands of ordinary men and women struggling to survive in the face of a remorseless war of attrition, and its legacy continues to be felt today.

Combining historical narrative with the specifics of a guidebook, The Historic Cumberland Plateau is an indispensable aid for visiting and experiencing an area rich in natural wonders and scenic beauty. First published in 1992, the book has now been extensively revised to include the latest information about points of interest and cultural events on the Cumberland Plateau. A land known for its great caves, cascading waterfalls, natural arches, and isolated river canyons, the Plateau stretches from northeast to southwest, encompassing parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Within its geographic boundaries are many protected areas, including the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, and the Obed National Wild and Scenic River. The Plateau also possesses a unique history and cultural heritage. Inhabited first by Native Americans, then by pioneers migrating westward, the Plateau contains many sites that attest to its rich history. As different groups passed through, some chose to settle permanently, resulting in a diverse cultural heritage celebrated today in many regional events. Each chapter of this book, focusing on a specific area on the Plateau, is filled with fascinating historical facts and anecdotes, as well as practical information about services and accommodations, events, and directions to natural wonders, hiking trails, and historic sites. The Author: Russ Manning is an award-winning freelance writer and author of several outdoor guidebooks. His articles on the outdoors and conservation have been published in Outside, Blue Ridge Country, Walking Magazine, Appalachia, Environment, Sierra, Environmental Ethics, and The Tennessee Conservationist.

Tennessee Coal Mining, Railroading & Logging in Cumberland, Fentress, Overton & Putnam is a fascinating look back at life in the early 1900s in four counties of the northern Cumberland Plateau area of Tennessee. Featured inside is a wealth of old photographs--more than 200 in the book's 120 oversize glossy pages--maps, and descriptions. Emphasis is placed primarily on the coal camps such as Wilder in Fentress County, with great detail concerning the railroads that served the coal mining communities.

“At the time it was first published in 1962, it framed such an urgent appeal to the American conscience that it actually prompted the creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission, an agency that has pumped millions of dollars into Appalachia. Caudill’s study begins in the violence of the Indian wars and ends in the economic despair of the 1950s and 1960s. Two hundred years ago, the Cumberland Plateau was a land of great promise. Its deep, twisting valleys contained rich bottomlands. The surrounding mountains were teeming with game and covered with valuable timber. The people who came into this land scratched out a living by farming, hunting, and making all the things they need-including whiskey. The quality of life in Appalachia declined during the Civil War and Appalachia remained “in a bad way” for the next century. By the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Appalachia had become an island of poverty in a national sea of plenty and prosperity. Caudill’s book alerted the mainstream world to our problems and their causes. Since then the ARC has provided millions of dollars to strengthen the brick and mortar infrastructure of Appalachia and to help us recover from a century of economic problems that had greatly undermined our quality of life.”-Print ed.

Rebels on the Border offers a remarkably compelling and significant study of the Civil War South's highly contested and bloodiest border states: Kentucky and Missouri. By far the most complex examination to date, the book sharply focuses on the "borderland" between the free North and the Confederate South. As a result, Rebels on the Border deepens and enhances understanding of the sectional conflict, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. After slaves in central Kentucky and Missouri gained their emancipation, author Aaron Astor contends, they transformed informal kin and social networks of resistance against slavery into more formalized processes of electoral participation and institution building. At the same time, white politics in Kentucky's Bluegrass and Missouri's Little Dixie underwent an electoral realignment in response to the racial and social revolution caused by the war and its aftermath. Black citizenship and voting rights provoked a violent white reaction and a cultural reinterpretation of white regional identity. After the war, the majority of wartime Unionists in the Bluegrass and Little Dixie joined former Confederate guerrillas in the Democratic Party in an effort to stifle the political ambitions of former slaves. Rebels on the Border is not simply a story of bitter political struggles, partisan guerrilla warfare, and racial violence. Like no other scholarly account of Kentucky and Missouri during the Civil War, it places these two crucial heartland states within the broad context of local, southern, and national politics.