There is an imaginary line, a green line made of rock called serpentine, that stretches along the eastern part of North America, from Georgia to Newfoundland. This line marks the ancient "geosuture"-the joining place of the North American and Eurasian continents during the geologic past. Kevin Dann's Traces on the Appalachians is a natural and human history of serpentine. Geologists have pondered the serpentine for the story it tells of earth history. The gray-green serpentine outcroppings represent traces of the earth's mantle, transported by sea-floor spreadings and thrust into the margins of the continent. They mark the collisions of tectonic plates and the birth of mountain chains. Botanists have puzzled over the strange plants that hopscotch their way along the dotted serpentine line, unable to live on more hospitable soil. To archaeologists, the artifacts carved from serpentine's companion rock, soapstone or steatite, have yielded precious clues to the human past. Native Americans used soapstone for heating-stones, bowls, pipes, and oil lamps. Vikings gratefully recognized the soft stone in the New World and fashioned it into their own household objects. Today, we put it to use in pancake griddles, wood stoves, and chemistry lab sinks. Writing in the tradition of John McPhee, Kevin Dann brilliantly interweaves new and old science with tales of human endeavor, local history, and personal exploration. Any reader with a taste for natural history will want to join his search for serpentine.

Part natural history, part poetry, Mountains of the Heart is full of hidden gems and less traveled parts of the Appalachian Mountains Stretching almost unbroken from Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, the Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. In Mountains of the Heart, renowned author and avid naturalist Scott Weidensaul shows how geology, ecology, climate, evolution, and 500 million years of history have shaped one of the continent's greatest landscapes into an ecosystem of unmatched beauty. This edition celebrates the book's 20th anniversary of publication and includes a new foreword from the author.

Richard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character.

MacKaye's seminal ideas on outdoor recreation, wilderness protection, land-use planning, community development, and transportation have inspired generations of activists, professionals, and adventurers seeking to strike a harmonious balance between human need and the natural environment.".

An eloquent account of Appalachia's past and future. Since European settlement, Appalachia's natural history has been profoundly impacted by the people who have lived, worked, and traveled there. Bolgiano's journey explores the influx of settlers, Native American displacement, lumber and coal exploitation, the birth of forestry, and conservation issues. 37 photos.

How the United States underdeveloped Appalachia Appalachia—among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America—has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in U.S. history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common. Ramp Hollow traces the rise of the Appalachian homestead and how its self-sufficiency resisted dependence on money and the industrial society arising elsewhere in the United States—until, beginning in the nineteenth century, extractive industries kicked off a “scramble for Appalachia” that left struggling homesteaders dispossessed of their land. As the men disappeared into coal mines and timber camps, and their families moved into shantytowns or deeper into the mountains, the commons of Appalachia were, in effect, enclosed, and the fate of the region was sealed. Ramp Hollow takes a provocative look at Appalachia, and the workings of dispossession around the world, by upending our notions about progress and development. Stoll ranges widely from literature to history to economics in order to expose a devastating process whose repercussions we still feel today.