Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and Politics in West Virginia

This well-written and well-documented 2005 volume is everything that last year's "West Virginia Tough Boys" by Davis wasn't -- a hard look at West Virginia politics by a reporter who followed the game for years and conveys to the average reader how political life has been lived for decades in a corrupt state. Where Davis focused on political shenanigans by powerful sheriffs and courthouse rings in southern West Virginia's coal counties, Stafford takes a broader, more holistic view, following, in chronological order, the state administrations of various governors from the 1930s through the 1990s. Stafford's work is a lot easier to follow, doesn't rely so much on long, rambling passages from oral histories, and brings the practiced eye of a veteran statehouse political reporter to his subject. It's a valuable addition to the literature, however neither Davis nor Stafford really manages to satisfactorily answer the fundamental question: why has political corruption and malfeasance been permitted to persist for so long in America's poorest, neediest state?