United States of Appalachia in paperback

“Read it and your faltering hopes will rise.” – Studs Terkel

“Biggers has fashioned a masterpiece of popular history.” – Citizen-Times

The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America
by Jeff Biggers
$16 paperback
Shoemaker and Hoard
ISBN-10: 1593761511
ISBN-13: 978-1593761516

Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States, a cradle of freedom and independence and a hotbed for the arts, ranging from the American Revolution to the abolitionist, labor and civil rights movements, and groundbreaking literary and musical inventions. Far from being in the backwash of American history, Appalachia has prodoced some of our country’s most important innovators, including Cherokee inventor Sequoyah, Black History Month founder Carter Woodson, jazz and country music legends Bessie Smith, WC Handy, Nina Simone, the Carter Family and Loretta Lynn among many others, NY Times publisher Adolph Ochs, legions of authors including Pearl S. Buck, Thomas Wolfe, Edward Abbey, Cormac McCarthy, Henry Louis Gates, James Still and Rebecca Harding Davis, and social activists John Rankin, Martin Delany, Myles Horton and Walter Reuther, to name only a few.
With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers shows that to understand American history it is essential to know Appalachian history.

I have to go ahead and give my two cents about this book. Jeff Biggers has done an outstanding job with The United States of Appalachia in organizing some of the greatest cultural, intellectual, and historical events of Appalachia into a single volume. This book was the first piece of non-fiction that helped turned me into the Appalachian-supremacist that I have become :). And while we live in a wonderful world and an incredible country, theres no place like home!

…

“Biggers¹s inspiring book should be a best-seller immediately. It is a how-to book–how to assert your fundamental rights and how to speak out in the manner of the American Revolution footsloggers, whose descendants they are. Read it and your faltering hopes will rise.” Studs Terkel, author of And They All Sang and Hard Times

“Biggers tells his story with verve and vivid detail, a story that will at once provoke and inspire.”
Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies

“Biggers’ book educates us as to just how biased and ignorant we really are about this region and its rich legacy of cultural, political, and intellectual pioneers…”The United States of Appalachia” is full of historical insights…” San Antonio Express-News

Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, radio correspondent, and educator across the United States, Europe, India, and Mexico. His award-winning stories and programs have aired on NPR and PRI and have appeared in various magazines and newspapers. Author of In the Sierra Madre, he also coedited No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won an American Book Award. For more information, visit his website: www.jeffbiggers.com

About JW Randolph

Raised on the banks of the Tennessee River, JW's work to create progress in his home state and throughout Appalachia has been featured on the Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Kos and Grist. He served first as Appalachian Voices’ Legislative Associate and then Tennessee director until leaving to pursue a career in medicine in 2012.