The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America

It got me mid-way, 'bout the time I realized that I was reading not a history book but a great American saga, as the author writers in a seat-of-your-pants chapter on the labor movement: the Great American Industrial Saga. Did you know that the first story of social realist/literary naturalism (don't know the difference myself) came out of Appalachia by a young woman, who wrote about the Iron Mills in Appalachia for The Atlantic Monthly in 1861!! And then jazz-stepping cotton mill girls driving their Model T's down the mountain roads to save their lovers...and then the coal miners: Which Side Are You On? This book goes on like this. One great story after another (only the early American history bogged down on me, but hey, we gotta start somewhere). The United States of Appalachia is an unusual book...the kind that makes you rethink every stereotype you have planted in your brain, but more importantly, the kind that makes you rethink American history completely. As many other reviews have noted, there is a common question that keeps coming into your head as you read this book: Why have I never heard about this? Why didn't I know that the New York Times was owned and led and saved by an Appalachian publisher? Why didn't I know that mountaineers turned the tide of the American Revolution at Kings Mountain? Why didn't I know that young civil rights students learned We Shall Overcome at an Appalachian school? Why didn't I know that Nina Simone, that tempestous jazz icon, came from the backwoods and introduced House of the Rising Sun (not the silly Animals or Bob Dylan)? Why didn't I know that Pearl Buck wrote a memoir on West Virginia that was instrumental in her Nobel laureate? Read this book. I loved it. You will, too.

Beautiful writing, page after page, that gets to the heart of the American experience. What impressed me was the range of material. The author starts with Martha Graham and ends with Edward Abbey, and weaves in famous and should-be famous persons from music, the Cherokee, the pioneers, turn-of-the century icons, to the 1960s. Jeff Biggers is an old fashioned renaissance story-teller. He can go from one theme to the next with real ease. I think this book is going to surprise a lot of people. It surprised me.

I saw this author at the Virginia Book Festival. He is a terrific speaker. I sat spellbound for all of his presentation--or reading. The book, I was afraid, might let me down, but it didn't. It is as inspiring as Biggers' speaking style. In it, the author peels off one incredible story after another--most of which I had never heard before--from the time of the Cherokee and their Renaissance until today. There are more colorful characters than a Greek tragicomedy--and they're all true life figures. Biggers' thesis is simple: You can't understand America until you understand Appalachia. After reading this book, you will be a believer.

I rarely read history, but the United States of Appalachia is one of those rare reads that you wished you had read when you were a student. It reads like a novel--the kind you wish would never end. Fortunately for us old-timers today, Jeff Biggers has written a book that forces us to reconsider our misperceptions about how and where American history was made, about how and why we relegate some regions to a footnote when in fact they deserve a major chapter, and shows us how our country's most mocked region has in fact been a wellspring of innovation. Sound like a dry history treatise? This book isn't. Why? Because it tells the stories of history makers, some famous and some not so famous, who have been on the cutting edge of social reforms, social rebellions and social movements for art, justice and political change. Biggers throws out a wide net. In doing so, he breaks down the ignorant hillbilly stereotype subject by subject, movement by movement. He explains how the stereotypes grew, just as mountaineers continued to be innovators, and how the region became urbanized and urbane. He calls this paradox the great American saga. He writes about Sequoyah and the Cherokee renaissance, pioneers and the first independent community in the colonies and their role in turning the tide of the American Revolution, abolitionists and educators, labor organizers and "disorderly women" who took the jazz age to the mills and mines, pioneering civil rights organizers. He also dedicates a lot of time to music and literature, focusing on surprising figures like jazz singer Nina Simone, blues singer Bessie Smith, Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Little Lord Faunteroy author Frances H. Burnett, and contemporary writers like Cormac McCarthy. In sum, this is American history at its best.

I agree with most of ther reviewers below. Jeff Biggers has simply shattered the backwards stereotypes with a stunning blow of history and done a lot of research to show the amazing folks that came out of Appalachia. He paints a broad canvass. He's not stuck on one group. He loves them all. In fact, I'd call this book a love letter to Appalachia and a reminder of their importance to America. Barry Vance's review below is dead wrong. Biggers weaves one tale after another about the Scotch Irish, as other reviewers have noted. And besides, Vance completely confuses his singer. Biggers wrote about Bessie Smith, from Chattanooga, and Nina Simone, from Tryon, North Carolina, not Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin. He just says they were influenced by Smith and Simone. Get your singers right, Mr. Vance!