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Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class
The largely untold story of the great migration of white southerners to the industrial Midwest and its profound and enduring political and social consequences
Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated to the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial Midwest in search of work. The "hillbilly highway" was one of the largest internal relocations of poor and working people in American history, yet it has largely escaped close study by historians. In Hillbilly Highway , Max Fraser recovers the long-overlooked story of this massive demographic event and reveals how it has profoundly influenced American history and culture―from the modern industrial labor movement and the postwar urban crisis to the rise of today’s white working-class conservatives.
The book draws on a diverse range of sources―from government reports, industry archives, and union records to novels, memoirs, oral histories, and country music―to narrate the distinctive class experience that unfolded across the Transappalachian migration during these critical decades. As the migration became a terrain of both social advancement and marginalization, it knit together white working-class communities across the Upper South and the Midwest―bringing into being a new cultural region that remains a contested battleground in American politics to the present.
The compelling story of an important and neglected chapter in American history, Hillbilly Highway upends conventional wisdom about the enduring political and cultural consequences of the great migration of white southerners in the twentieth century.
Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated to the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial Midwest in search of work. The "hillbilly highway" was one of the largest internal relocations of poor and working people in American history, yet it has largely escaped close study by historians. In Hillbilly Highway , Max Fraser recovers the long-overlooked story of this massive demographic event and reveals how it has profoundly influenced American history and culture―from the modern industrial labor movement and the postwar urban crisis to the rise of today’s white working-class conservatives.
The book draws on a diverse range of sources―from government reports, industry archives, and union records to novels, memoirs, oral histories, and country music―to narrate the distinctive class experience that unfolded across the Transappalachian migration during these critical decades. As the migration became a terrain of both social advancement and marginalization, it knit together white working-class communities across the Upper South and the Midwest―bringing into being a new cultural region that remains a contested battleground in American politics to the present.
The compelling story of an important and neglected chapter in American history, Hillbilly Highway upends conventional wisdom about the enduring political and cultural consequences of the great migration of white southerners in the twentieth century.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
August 25, 2024
Read this instead of Hillbilly Elegy
November 1, 2023
I've read several non-fiction books about the Great Migration, which changed the landscape of 20th Century America and has impacted us all in some meaningful way. Prior to this book, I'd never heard of the so-called Hillbilly Highway, but I was equally intrigued. I've never been to Appalachia, the Ozarks, or other rural, poor regions of the American South, though I've read quite a bit about them. I absolutely respected this author's premise that the the Hillbilly Highway is pertinent to modern U.S. politics, and I've read books with similar premises, to include Strangers in Their Own Land and White Trash, along with the bootstraps memoir Hillbilly Elegy that capitalized on a new fascination with white poverty. I appreciate Fraser's analysis of Vance's misguided cult of bootstrap mythology, but I was hoping for a counter-narrative here.
In the 1990s, only 30 years after the major events of this books, I lived in one of the midwestern urban neighborhoods described in this book as a "Hillbilly ghetto," but in that time there was no evidence of Hillbilly culture nor any mention of the neighborhood's history. In fact, aside from Nick at Night reruns, prior to this book I'd never heard of "Hillbilly" culture spilling over into northern communities at all. Still, I was very open to learning about this trend. What I learned was the reason that country music thrives even now in the midwest and heard reinforcement of stereotypes of poor southern whites.
Still, the book mainly presented a cultural divide amongst white urban middle class and white rural poor. That's not unimportant to understanding U.S. political dynamics, but what I didn't learn from this book is whether there's a cultural divide between the white culture of rural agricultural communities in the north and the south. I already know there's a cultural difference between urban and rural cultures.
In the 1990s, only 30 years after the major events of this books, I lived in one of the midwestern urban neighborhoods described in this book as a "Hillbilly ghetto," but in that time there was no evidence of Hillbilly culture nor any mention of the neighborhood's history. In fact, aside from Nick at Night reruns, prior to this book I'd never heard of "Hillbilly" culture spilling over into northern communities at all. Still, I was very open to learning about this trend. What I learned was the reason that country music thrives even now in the midwest and heard reinforcement of stereotypes of poor southern whites.
Still, the book mainly presented a cultural divide amongst white urban middle class and white rural poor. That's not unimportant to understanding U.S. political dynamics, but what I didn't learn from this book is whether there's a cultural divide between the white culture of rural agricultural communities in the north and the south. I already know there's a cultural difference between urban and rural cultures.
January 11, 2025
A much more insightful and honest look at Appalachia then Hillbilly Elegy.
October 5, 2023
One of the best books of the year and a serious look at a most often overlooked historical population development and its role in the transformation of society.
April 14, 2024
Having grown up in Michigan and spent many years in Indiana, I found the history presented here interesting and I’m surprised it’s not something I’ve learned more of. That said, the way the information is presented is not my cup of tea. I found the writing needlessly convoluted. Sentences are paragraphs and paragraphs are pages. Especially when trying to tell real facts and stories, I’m a fan of more simple writing, let the story tell itself in a way that readers can most simply absorb. It felt at times like Fraser was attempting to prove his intelligence through using “big words” and complicated sentence structure instead of prioritizing simplicity and the best way to present information.
My favorite parts were when he used real people or events to tell the history, for example the conclusion kicking off with the story of Muncie’s Southside High School. If more of the book were structured like that section it would get more stars in my book.
My favorite parts were when he used real people or events to tell the history, for example the conclusion kicking off with the story of Muncie’s Southside High School. If more of the book were structured like that section it would get more stars in my book.
May 13, 2024
More like 2.5. This was honestly kind of really boring for some reason, largely perhaps because it felt like I'd read this story before, or maybe just this style of storytelling before. Which is not what I need as someone who currently feels a little out of love with the discipline of History, despite having set it as one of my life goals. It was however interesting that a lot of this felt repetitive from African urban histories in the postwar period, in some ways. I also appreciate the general arguments about how hillbilly/Appalachian culture has been misrepresented historically and today, based often on racial categorizations and the essentialization of people from those areas. So, I guess useful. And I don't usually read American histories, so interesting in that respect. But just not interesting in a lot of other ways.
February 27, 2024
It was very interesting but a bit slow going at several points. I finally decided the timelines got a little disconnected in some of the transition points from one chapter to another and that led to the feeling that the times were overlapped in an artificial way at some of those points. Overall the info and such held up. In quite a lot of it I could see my own time in a slightly different perspective.
November 17, 2023
This is a book about the migration of white southerners to northern metropolises in the early to mid 20th centuries. This is a migration generally overlooked, as it didn't lead to as visible or lasting a social cleaveage as that of the migration of black southerners, which went on at the same time. Also, Fraser thinks it's an oft-misunderstood migration.
The book begins in the south and notes how the region went through a collapse of the traditional agricultural economy. You didn't need as many people per acre as you used to. Initially, it was migration to local urban areas and job centers, but eventually it expended. The rise of the US highway system helped allow the migration to go outside the region more. Unlike the Great Migration of blacks, there was tons of return migration by whites. Some southern whites even established their own bus lines and transportation compnies to help facilitate this migration. Contacts and links mattered, and some companies preferred to hire southern whites, assuming they'd be more conservative and less likely to support unions. More labor organizers also thought they wouldn't support unions. Fraser, however, argues that southern whites were active in the labor movement. In the north, southerns often had their own neighborhoods, which weren't 100% southern but had their own character. These neighborhoods were often seen as centers of poverty (just as their southern homes were). Northerners assumed they were all from Appalachia, even though many weren't. Attempts by social workers and eventually the federal government to address the problems of the poor initially focused on southern migrants, though eventually switched more to blacks (north and south). The hillbilllies had their own establishments, most notably hillbilly bars known for rowdiness, fights, and country music. They brought their churches with them too, and the explosion of more southern migrants to the north after WWII helped the national rise of these evangelical churches, as well as the rise in popularity of country music in general. Fraser has an extended segement later on focusing on country music, and how it changed, and how that change reflected an overall shift in hillbilly culture. There were always elements on nostalgia and conservatism, but these became more self-reflexive and central, feeding into a sense of self that became a bit of a distorted mirror to what had once been.
The book begins in the south and notes how the region went through a collapse of the traditional agricultural economy. You didn't need as many people per acre as you used to. Initially, it was migration to local urban areas and job centers, but eventually it expended. The rise of the US highway system helped allow the migration to go outside the region more. Unlike the Great Migration of blacks, there was tons of return migration by whites. Some southern whites even established their own bus lines and transportation compnies to help facilitate this migration. Contacts and links mattered, and some companies preferred to hire southern whites, assuming they'd be more conservative and less likely to support unions. More labor organizers also thought they wouldn't support unions. Fraser, however, argues that southern whites were active in the labor movement. In the north, southerns often had their own neighborhoods, which weren't 100% southern but had their own character. These neighborhoods were often seen as centers of poverty (just as their southern homes were). Northerners assumed they were all from Appalachia, even though many weren't. Attempts by social workers and eventually the federal government to address the problems of the poor initially focused on southern migrants, though eventually switched more to blacks (north and south). The hillbilllies had their own establishments, most notably hillbilly bars known for rowdiness, fights, and country music. They brought their churches with them too, and the explosion of more southern migrants to the north after WWII helped the national rise of these evangelical churches, as well as the rise in popularity of country music in general. Fraser has an extended segement later on focusing on country music, and how it changed, and how that change reflected an overall shift in hillbilly culture. There were always elements on nostalgia and conservatism, but these became more self-reflexive and central, feeding into a sense of self that became a bit of a distorted mirror to what had once been.
July 13, 2024
Much of the rust belt industry of the Midwest was powered by the muscles of migrants from rural Appalachia. I knew that, but more from the perspective of the mountains that they left than from the industrial towns that they moved to. This book filled out the picture. I learned some important things that I didn't know. First of all, most of the migrants were not straight off farms in remote rural hollows. Generally they had worked in coal mines or small town factories at least part time before moving their families out of the mountains, so they had some level of sophistication with modern work environments. Also, they were more migrants than immigrants. They would stay for a few months in the industrial cities and then go back home to the mountains, so it was harder for them to develop permanent connections or to own homes in their new cities. This contributed to their clustering in poor parts of town and made assimilation into their new communites harder. Their distinctive accents didn't help. Mr. Fraser also says that they were not as conservative or anti-union as they are usually portrayed.
In some cases the Hillbilly Highways were more than metaphorical as migration patterns formed clusters around areas at either ends of the migration that were defined by major roads. I suppose it should not be surprising that people from the same small town would move together to the same industrial city, where they would know some people, have help getting started and have a small sense of home away from home.
I grew up in one of the target cities for migration from the mountains, Lexington, Kentucky. Most of the people I knew looked down on the mountain people - they were "white trash." But some of them were interesting and colorful people, and I came to understand how wrong and unfair the sneering attitude was. Over time I have developed more of an interest in mountain people and culture and have great compassion for the suffering that they have endured at the hands of people from my part of the world who plundered their beautiful mountains, pushed them into poverty and made it so they had no choice but to go elsewhere in search of work.
In some cases the Hillbilly Highways were more than metaphorical as migration patterns formed clusters around areas at either ends of the migration that were defined by major roads. I suppose it should not be surprising that people from the same small town would move together to the same industrial city, where they would know some people, have help getting started and have a small sense of home away from home.
I grew up in one of the target cities for migration from the mountains, Lexington, Kentucky. Most of the people I knew looked down on the mountain people - they were "white trash." But some of them were interesting and colorful people, and I came to understand how wrong and unfair the sneering attitude was. Over time I have developed more of an interest in mountain people and culture and have great compassion for the suffering that they have endured at the hands of people from my part of the world who plundered their beautiful mountains, pushed them into poverty and made it so they had no choice but to go elsewhere in search of work.
January 29, 2025
No idea how I came across this book but given the greater conversations about 'Hillbilly Elegy', it may have caught my eye. I know of the Great Migration but was unfamiliar with the Transappalachian one and was curious what this book could tell me. It also helped that it was available at my local library.
In a somewhat similar story to the Great Migration, many poor white Southerners made the trek out of the South to the factory towns of the Midwest, in the hopes of a better life. This has not been as well studied as other large migrations, but the path these people took would help reshape the regions (both the ones they left and the ones they settled into) including modern industrial labor movement and white working class conservatives.
While there's a lot here and much to be studied, this book was really, really dull. There is a lot of research here, but it felt like a lot of the book was a research info-dump rather than a coherent story. The author does give personal anecdotes but overall I found it really hard to get though.
All the same, there is a ton here that would be food for thought. A general study or even a comparative one for why white Southerners and Black Southerners took the paths they did would be interesting. If you haven't read 'The Warmth of Other Suns,' this might be a good companion book for that study.
Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.
In a somewhat similar story to the Great Migration, many poor white Southerners made the trek out of the South to the factory towns of the Midwest, in the hopes of a better life. This has not been as well studied as other large migrations, but the path these people took would help reshape the regions (both the ones they left and the ones they settled into) including modern industrial labor movement and white working class conservatives.
While there's a lot here and much to be studied, this book was really, really dull. There is a lot of research here, but it felt like a lot of the book was a research info-dump rather than a coherent story. The author does give personal anecdotes but overall I found it really hard to get though.
All the same, there is a ton here that would be food for thought. A general study or even a comparative one for why white Southerners and Black Southerners took the paths they did would be interesting. If you haven't read 'The Warmth of Other Suns,' this might be a good companion book for that study.
Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.
September 6, 2025
As an Appalachian, I approach books about Appalachian and environs written by non-Appalachians with great caution. All too many times, I've found myself repelled by authors leaning into stereotypes. Often, I also find authors who should know better, who are from here, getting things, well, just wrong. (I’m looking at you, Starling House. That’s not how mineral rights work.)
This is not one of those books. Step by step, Fraser builds an argument that first, a combination of the federal government modernization programs and unfettered industrial capitalism displaced poor Southern whites in the first half of the 1900s both by government policy, and by extracting the resources for profit by out of state corporations. In concert with the failure by local authorities to invest in higher-wage manufacturing, this put “untenable” pressure on the remaining marginal agricultural land. According to Fraser, these factors put together created the markers of “internal colonialism” and created keen social and economic incentives to “work away,” as my family calls it.
Next, Fraser draws out the lesser-known details of the internal migration of these poor Southern whites, who, unlike Black folks fleeing racial terrorism, had the ability to tell their boss to “take this job and shove it” by going back home--and many, many of them did, according to Fraser’s data.. In addition, Fraser details the remittance aspect, the unpaid labor of women who made this travel possible, and the intimate connections between the migrants and their home places. (Up until the 1990s, my local paper had a “society” page that detailed when folks working away came home again, and who they visited with while they were home.)
Building on these foundations, Fraser argues that rather than being naive country bumpkins, the white internal migrants were already familiar with labor struggles from the bloody Mine Wars, as well as the dangers of high-pressure logging (still one of the deadliest occupations in the USA--I went to my first logging funeral when I was six years old), the debt peonage of commercial farming, and the notorious deadly labor of textile factories (see also: Lewis Hines and textile mills). When predatory corporations sought to capitalize on what they saw as “culturally deficient, desperate Southern whites” (marked as “other” the moment they opened their mouths) by hiring them at lower wages, which created mass resentment among Northern locals (see pg 91 for more details.) That resentment spurred later stereotypes about strike agitators, hardening what could have been a workforce integrated into Northern cities as an essentially “unassimilable core of economically precarious and socially marginalized malcontents, who were primed for a fight when the time came.” (pg 99)
After drawing this picture of transAppalachian migrants versus the predatory corporations, surrounded by Northern resentment, Fraser develops this into “An Other America: Hillbilly ghettos after World War II,” in which at the time race riots were explicitly blamed on “ignorant Negroes and southern whites.” Fraser brings data to show that poor Southern whites were viewed as the most undesirable group, at twice the rate of Black Americans. (pg 109) Frasier takes pains to show the structural inequalities at play: substandard housing permitted by lax housing code enforcement, crowded apartments and frequent moves due to predatory landlords, environmental hazards such as little to no trash service, lead poisoning from substandard housing, tuberculosis from overcrowding, higher infant and maternal mortality rates due to an inability to afford a doctor, persistent malnutrition due to an inability to buy food, and school leaving due to the need to get a job. Fraser also shows police discrimination at play, “arresting southern-born whites…at roughly twice the rate at which such migrants appeared in the neighborhood’s general population.” (pg 127) Less commonly mentioned in social studies, but, to my mind, highly relevant, Fraser also discusses the class implications of bars and churches primarily supported by poor Southern whites---that hardened, unassimilated core created their own support networks, which were much despised by their neighbors. During this recitation, Fraser does take pains to point out, “most Southern white migrants did not end up settling in hillbilly ghettos.”
One of the most interesting pieces of Fraser’s argument comes next, in which he shows how the cycle of poverty nonsense came out of a failure to address those systemic issues, instead victim-blaming through the creation of a “culture of poverty” which haunts us to this day. Local Appalachian intellectuals took this and ran with it, reinforcing long-standing class dynamics back home through the propagation of this nonsense, much as JD Vance does today---as always, conveniently eliding the necessity of asking the affected people what they want and need. (JD Vance isn’t an Appalachian and I am not surrendering that hill.) Fraser points out that as the Black civil rights movement became influential (and a target--see also, Daniel Patrick Moynihan taking a theory developed for dealing with intractable pockets of poverty inhabited by whites and Blacks alike and laying it out as Black pathology), urban poverty became “a distinctly Black phenomenon.” (pg 173)
When the Democratic party dropped the ball for this huge mass of poor whites with their roots in the South, Fraser argues, it opened the doorway to an increasingly rightward political drift in these strongholds of union collectivism (see also, the 2018 WV teacher’s strike, and the 2016 WV electoral college votes). Fraser paints this picture through the changes in country music--which are so appropriate today! Beyoncé has a new country music album out! This is particularly interesting because Fraser is at his most explicit in linking the “expunging” of the hillbilly critique of capitalism by a capitalism-based profit motive into a “conservative, traditionalist, and racist” genre---and as those poor white Southerners slowly became more settled in their Northern homes, the musical links spilled that commercialized music into wider society.
Altogether a most interesting book, and I’m quite glad to have read it.
This is not one of those books. Step by step, Fraser builds an argument that first, a combination of the federal government modernization programs and unfettered industrial capitalism displaced poor Southern whites in the first half of the 1900s both by government policy, and by extracting the resources for profit by out of state corporations. In concert with the failure by local authorities to invest in higher-wage manufacturing, this put “untenable” pressure on the remaining marginal agricultural land. According to Fraser, these factors put together created the markers of “internal colonialism” and created keen social and economic incentives to “work away,” as my family calls it.
Next, Fraser draws out the lesser-known details of the internal migration of these poor Southern whites, who, unlike Black folks fleeing racial terrorism, had the ability to tell their boss to “take this job and shove it” by going back home--and many, many of them did, according to Fraser’s data.. In addition, Fraser details the remittance aspect, the unpaid labor of women who made this travel possible, and the intimate connections between the migrants and their home places. (Up until the 1990s, my local paper had a “society” page that detailed when folks working away came home again, and who they visited with while they were home.)
Building on these foundations, Fraser argues that rather than being naive country bumpkins, the white internal migrants were already familiar with labor struggles from the bloody Mine Wars, as well as the dangers of high-pressure logging (still one of the deadliest occupations in the USA--I went to my first logging funeral when I was six years old), the debt peonage of commercial farming, and the notorious deadly labor of textile factories (see also: Lewis Hines and textile mills). When predatory corporations sought to capitalize on what they saw as “culturally deficient, desperate Southern whites” (marked as “other” the moment they opened their mouths) by hiring them at lower wages, which created mass resentment among Northern locals (see pg 91 for more details.) That resentment spurred later stereotypes about strike agitators, hardening what could have been a workforce integrated into Northern cities as an essentially “unassimilable core of economically precarious and socially marginalized malcontents, who were primed for a fight when the time came.” (pg 99)
After drawing this picture of transAppalachian migrants versus the predatory corporations, surrounded by Northern resentment, Fraser develops this into “An Other America: Hillbilly ghettos after World War II,” in which at the time race riots were explicitly blamed on “ignorant Negroes and southern whites.” Fraser brings data to show that poor Southern whites were viewed as the most undesirable group, at twice the rate of Black Americans. (pg 109) Frasier takes pains to show the structural inequalities at play: substandard housing permitted by lax housing code enforcement, crowded apartments and frequent moves due to predatory landlords, environmental hazards such as little to no trash service, lead poisoning from substandard housing, tuberculosis from overcrowding, higher infant and maternal mortality rates due to an inability to afford a doctor, persistent malnutrition due to an inability to buy food, and school leaving due to the need to get a job. Fraser also shows police discrimination at play, “arresting southern-born whites…at roughly twice the rate at which such migrants appeared in the neighborhood’s general population.” (pg 127) Less commonly mentioned in social studies, but, to my mind, highly relevant, Fraser also discusses the class implications of bars and churches primarily supported by poor Southern whites---that hardened, unassimilated core created their own support networks, which were much despised by their neighbors. During this recitation, Fraser does take pains to point out, “most Southern white migrants did not end up settling in hillbilly ghettos.”
One of the most interesting pieces of Fraser’s argument comes next, in which he shows how the cycle of poverty nonsense came out of a failure to address those systemic issues, instead victim-blaming through the creation of a “culture of poverty” which haunts us to this day. Local Appalachian intellectuals took this and ran with it, reinforcing long-standing class dynamics back home through the propagation of this nonsense, much as JD Vance does today---as always, conveniently eliding the necessity of asking the affected people what they want and need. (JD Vance isn’t an Appalachian and I am not surrendering that hill.) Fraser points out that as the Black civil rights movement became influential (and a target--see also, Daniel Patrick Moynihan taking a theory developed for dealing with intractable pockets of poverty inhabited by whites and Blacks alike and laying it out as Black pathology), urban poverty became “a distinctly Black phenomenon.” (pg 173)
When the Democratic party dropped the ball for this huge mass of poor whites with their roots in the South, Fraser argues, it opened the doorway to an increasingly rightward political drift in these strongholds of union collectivism (see also, the 2018 WV teacher’s strike, and the 2016 WV electoral college votes). Fraser paints this picture through the changes in country music--which are so appropriate today! Beyoncé has a new country music album out! This is particularly interesting because Fraser is at his most explicit in linking the “expunging” of the hillbilly critique of capitalism by a capitalism-based profit motive into a “conservative, traditionalist, and racist” genre---and as those poor white Southerners slowly became more settled in their Northern homes, the musical links spilled that commercialized music into wider society.
Altogether a most interesting book, and I’m quite glad to have read it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 7, 2025
I finished this book and WOW I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH. Really captured how poverty in America has been viewed over time and how before it was seen as an impact on black people, poor whites and black people stood side by side in solidarity. It really shows the history of this culture and how it became the way it is today, I think people are wising up and coming out of their shell and realizing they’ve been bamboozled. The democrats and progressives really have an opportunity to make gains, with people that have voted with republicans because their number one issue is the economy, so if you can communicate how look at democrat run states. Our economies are much better than yours! Are economies are so strong we have a homelessness problem. Because the housing is so competitive, so maybe if you want your economy to be as strong as ours… raise taxes ( just a little bit) to spend on education, duh. Idk bruh, like, it’s not that difficult.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 28, 2024
This cultural history of the 20th century was of interest, and far exceeded my expectations. Explaining in time bounded, but also, categories of life and lifestyle, the effects that the mass migration of Appalachian people to the industrial midwest had upon our country. Significant themes were the way of life these people brought to the immediate post war and then mid century culture of the north, in areas of housing, entertainment, worship, music, and labor. As a descendent (a few generations on) of this diaspora I saw many of the themes of my own upbringing in this, but also came to better understand the labor movements of the 30's to the 50's and the origins of modern 'country' music and its evolution.
January 5, 2026
This book is a solid 4.5 stars for me. I read this slow, noodling on the broader points to try to connect the outlined history to my life shuttling on the hillbilly highway (Routes 35 and 50) between Ohio and West Virginia, and to my father before me — who actually grew up in Charleston. There’s a lot I recognized here. I appreciate the history this book uncovers, touching on an oft forgotten (and degraded) population of American history.
January 5, 2025
I did not quite finish the book as it needed to be returned to the library.
However, it was an interesting look at the large numbers of Northern Appalachian residents who move for work in the upper mid-west, as prospects for work in their rural villages are bleak. While some remain in the north, many move back and forth, feeling the pull of family and country culture in the mountains.
June 19, 2025
This is a great work of history. Interesting and seemingly new claims about Appalachian migrants moving to urban centers in the Midwest and how it remade American social policy in the post ww2 era. I was less compelled by the chapter about country music and how this migration impacted its development, but overall a new and unique topic focus that has a varied research base.
October 8, 2023
Fascinating topic, especially as a resident of Kentucky, and one that I knew little about. Listened to the audiobook, which was both engaging and an easy listen—the narrator Lyle Blaker did a great job.
September 23, 2024
A very insightful and touching analysis of the character of an oft-reviled group of Americans. Fraser combats stereotypes about the rural white southerner without painting an overly idealistic and romanticized view of them.
July 8, 2025
This is a nice look at the trans-Appalachian migration that looks at both the causes and impact of it. The book unfortunately stops short of looking at the more modern impact of the working class decline and its impact. A look at the more modern political impact would make this more comprehensive.
November 14, 2023
A solid combination of history and sociology addressing the white appalachian experience. Everyone who thinks they should read Hillbilly Elegy really should read this.
January 22, 2024
I had to read this for a class! I enjoyed learning more about this topic in history!
February 2, 2024
There was so much interesting information in this book, but I found the writing to be a bit redundant.
July 9, 2024
Interesting but dry.
September 21, 2024
Well researched and masterfully written - and a telling accounting of the bigotry against rural Appalachians.
October 17, 2024
Must read for anyone from Appalachia
February 9, 2025
Hillbilly Lost Cause
The book moves squarely through the early and mid 20th century following the rambling southern migrant transplants that found themselves in hillbilly ghettos. They were seen as the ‘other’ and viewed as backwards and ignorant. But they brought their culture, that also brought their pride, honor, and religious belief. I’d recommend readings about the Lost Cause along side this book.
The book moves squarely through the early and mid 20th century following the rambling southern migrant transplants that found themselves in hillbilly ghettos. They were seen as the ‘other’ and viewed as backwards and ignorant. But they brought their culture, that also brought their pride, honor, and religious belief. I’d recommend readings about the Lost Cause along side this book.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews