An icon of the Southern Appalachian region known for the seminal books Camping and Woodcraft and Our Southern Highlanders, Horace Kephart was instrumental in efforts to create a national park in the Smokies and to establish the Appalachian Trail through North Carolina and Tennessee. This is the behind-the-scenes story of a librarian-turned-woodsman who had a far-reaching effect on wilderness literature and outdoor pursuits throughout North America. "This long-awaited biography of Horace Kephart is so well written and informative that one reads it with the pleasure of a riveting novel and an admiration reserved for the finest scholarship. Back of Beyond is a triumph." Ron Rash, author of Serena "With affection and candor, McCue and Ellison reveal an intimate knowledge of Kephart's ancestry, education, marriage, and career, his place in American literature and history, and his part in the founding of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park." Robert Morgan, author of Boone: A Biography "This meticulously researched and carefully considered book is a great contribution to the history and culture of the Southern Appalachians." Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction George Ellison has written extensively about Horace Kephart and was designated one of the 100 most influential people in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In 2012 he won the Wild South Roosevelt-Ashe award for "Outstanding Journalism in Conservation." Janet McCue, an independent writer and researcher, has collaborated with Ellison and others on many Kephart projects. Her writing and research reveal Kephart's multi-faceted life as student, husband, father, librarian, writer, and public figure. She is the former director of Mann Library at Cornell University. All proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit the educational, historical, and scientific programs of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.--George Ellison and Janet McCue

When John M. Glen's Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 first appeared in 1988, it was hailed as a full and authoritative study of one of the South's most extraordinary and controversial institutions. Now, in this second edition, Glen updates Highlander's story through the 1990s. He incorporates newly available materials and the latest scholarship to detail the school's recent work in Appalachia, its efforts to bring international grassroots groups together on common issues, and its support of emerging economic and environmental justice campaigns. First named the Highlander Folk School and established in 1932 by Myles Horton and Don West near Monteagle, Tennessee, this adult education center has been both a vital resource for southern and Appalachian activists and a catalyst for several major movements for social change. During its first thirty years, Highlander served as a community folk school, as a training center for southern labor and Farmer's Union members, and as a meeting place for black and white civil rights workers. Its advocacy of racial equality ultimately prompted the state of Tennessee to revoke the charter of the original institution in 1962. Undaunted, the school's officers reorganized the institution as the Highlander Research and Education Center in Knoxville, where it gave ongoing support to the civil rights movement and promoted a multiracial poor people's coalition. Today, operating in New Market, Tennessee, it continues to devise new strategies of progressive change from the experiences of ordinary people. This comprehensive history offers a unique perspective on the movements, institutions, organizations, and individuals that permanently reshaped our understanding of the South and Appalachia in the twentieth century. It also suggests the range of problems and possibilities of using education to achieve economic, political, and racial justice.

Best known for Our Southern Highlanders (1913) and Camping and Woodcraft (1916), Horace Kephart's keen interest in exploring and documenting the great outdoors would lead him not only to settle in Bryson City, North Carolina, but also to become the most significant writer about the Great Smoky Mountains in the early twentieth century. Edited by Mae Miller Claxton and George Frizzell, Horace Kephart: Writings extends past Kephart's two well-read works of the early 1900s and dives into his correspondence with friends across the globe, articles and columns in national magazines, unpublished manuscripts, journal entries, and fiction in order to shed some deserved light on Kephart's classic image as a storyteller and practical guide to the Smokies. The book is divided into thematic subsections that call attention to the variety in Kephart's writings, its nine chapters featuring Kephart's works on camping and woodcraft, guns, southern Appalachian culture, fiction, the Cherokee, scouting, and the park and Appalachian trail. Each chapter is accompanied by an introductory essay by a notable Appalachian scholar providing context and background to the included works. Written for scholars interested in Appalachian culture and history, followers of the modern outdoor movement, students enamored of the Great Smoky Mountains, and general readers alike, Horace Kephart: Writings gathers a plethora of little-known and rarely seen material that illustrates the diversity and richness found in Kephart's work.

Westerners have long represented Africans as “backwards,” “primitive,” and “unintelligent,” distortions which have opened the door for American philanthropies to push their own education agendas in Africa. We Come as Members of the Superior Race discusses the origin and history of these dangerous stereotypes and western “infantilization” of African societies, exploring how their legacy continues to inform contemporary educational and development discourses. By viewing African societies as subordinated in a global geopolitical order, these problematic stereotypes continue to influence education policy and research in Sub-Sahara Africa today.

Often referred to as the leader of inspiration in Appalachian studies, Helen Matthews Lewis linked scholarship with activism and encouraged deeper analysis of the region. Lewis shaped the field of Appalachian studies by emphasizing community participation and challenging traditional perceptions of the region and its people. Helen Matthews Lewis: Living Social Justice in Appalachia, a collection of Lewis's writings and memories that document her life and work, begins in 1943 with her job on the yearbook staff at Georgia State College for Women with Mary Flannery O'Connor. Editors Patricia D. Beaver and Judith Jennings highlight the achievements of Lewis's extensive career, examining her role as a teacher and activist at Clinch Valley College (now University of Virginia at Wise) and East Tennessee State University in the 1960s, as well as her work with Appalshop and the Highland Center. Helen Matthews Lewis connects Lewis's works to wider social movements by examining the history of progressive activism in Appalachia. The book provides unique insight into the development of regional studies and the life of a dynamic revolutionary, delivering a captivating and personal narrative of one woman's mission of activism and social justice.