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The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America
“Jeff Biggers’s 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
"A masterpiece of popular history...revelations abound.”—Citizens-Times, North Carolina
"Biggers has done something more effectively than any other since Appalachian activist Harry M. Caudill penned his 1963 call to action, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Biggers has brought the Appalachian historical experience to a wide audience."--The Journal of Southern History
“Jeff Biggers opens a new window on the complex history of the region called Appalachia. He takes a hard but affectionate look at both the myths and the facts, and what he finds is by turns sobering and thrilling. Drawing on the contradictions, layers, and range of what is known as mountain culture, he shows that nothing is quite what it seems, and that to understand American history it is essential to know Appalachian history. Biggers tells his story with verve and vivid detail, a story that will at once provoke and inspire.”—Robert Morgan, author of Boone, Gap Creek
Few places in the United States confound and fascinate Americans like Appalachia, yet no other area has been so markedly mischaracterized by the mass media. Stereotypes of hillbillies and rednecks repeatedly appear in representations of the region, but few, if any, of its many heroes, visionaries, or innovators are ever referenced.
Make no mistake, they are legion: from Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, to Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer who invented the first syllabary in modern times, and international divas Nina Simone and Bessie Smith, as well as writers Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, and Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Appalachia has contributed mightily to American culture — and politics. Not only did eastern Tennessee boast the country's first antislavery newspaper, Appalachians also established the first District of Washington as a bold counterpoint to British rule. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers reminds us how Appalachians have defined and shaped the United States we know today.
"A masterpiece of popular history...revelations abound.”—Citizens-Times, North Carolina
"Biggers has done something more effectively than any other since Appalachian activist Harry M. Caudill penned his 1963 call to action, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Biggers has brought the Appalachian historical experience to a wide audience."--The Journal of Southern History
“Jeff Biggers opens a new window on the complex history of the region called Appalachia. He takes a hard but affectionate look at both the myths and the facts, and what he finds is by turns sobering and thrilling. Drawing on the contradictions, layers, and range of what is known as mountain culture, he shows that nothing is quite what it seems, and that to understand American history it is essential to know Appalachian history. Biggers tells his story with verve and vivid detail, a story that will at once provoke and inspire.”—Robert Morgan, author of Boone, Gap Creek
Few places in the United States confound and fascinate Americans like Appalachia, yet no other area has been so markedly mischaracterized by the mass media. Stereotypes of hillbillies and rednecks repeatedly appear in representations of the region, but few, if any, of its many heroes, visionaries, or innovators are ever referenced.
Make no mistake, they are legion: from Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, to Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer who invented the first syllabary in modern times, and international divas Nina Simone and Bessie Smith, as well as writers Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, and Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Appalachia has contributed mightily to American culture — and politics. Not only did eastern Tennessee boast the country's first antislavery newspaper, Appalachians also established the first District of Washington as a bold counterpoint to British rule. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers reminds us how Appalachians have defined and shaped the United States we know today.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
54 people are currently reading
569 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Biggers
14 books48 followersJeff Biggers is a cultural historian, journalist, playwright and novelist. He is the coauthor of the novel DISTURBING THE BONES with filmmaker Andrew Davis, and author of numerous nonfiction works, including IN SARDINIA: An Unexpected Journey in Italy (Melville House), TRIALS OF A SCOLD (St. Martin's), longlisted for the PEN Bograd Weld Award. Recipient of the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, Biggers has worked as a freelance journalist, radio correspondent, playwright, historian and educator across the US, Europe, Mexico and India. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, Salon, The Nation and on National Public Radio and Public Radio International. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post. Contributing editor at Bloomsbury Review.
His nonfiction works include State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science Book in 2012; Reckoning at Eagle Creek, recipient of the Delta Award for Literature and the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting; In the Sierra Madre, winner of the Foreword Magazine Travel Book of the Year Award; and The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a "masterpiece of popular history." He also served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won the American Book Award, and wrote the foreword to the re-issue of Huey Perry's classic, They'll Cut Off Your Project.
Biggers founded the Climate Narrative Project, a media arts and advocacy project.
For more info: www.jeffbiggers.com
His nonfiction works include State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science Book in 2012; Reckoning at Eagle Creek, recipient of the Delta Award for Literature and the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting; In the Sierra Madre, winner of the Foreword Magazine Travel Book of the Year Award; and The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a "masterpiece of popular history." He also served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won the American Book Award, and wrote the foreword to the re-issue of Huey Perry's classic, They'll Cut Off Your Project.
Biggers founded the Climate Narrative Project, a media arts and advocacy project.
For more info: www.jeffbiggers.com
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 14, 2008
I liked this book but was disappointed that he barely mentioned WV, instead focusing on tennessee, the carolinas, and even illinois and pennsylvania if you can believe that. as if any other state could be more appalachian than west by god.
May 28, 2019
Look at that subtitle. If your reaction is an incredulous "Say what? Southern mountaineers?" then you've hit on both the good and the bad of this book.
The good is that Biggers sets out to combat the tendency -- even among informed people -- to allow the word "Appalachia" to summon up a very limited range of "honorable exemplars": "high lonesome singers and banjo players, black-faced coal miners, wizened front porch storytellers," as well as to "dwell on what has been done to Appalachia, rather than what Appalachia has contributed to the world." And he succeeds marvelously in marshaling his counter-force of honorable exemplars, many of them unknown even among informed people: early advocates of emancipation like Elihu Embree of Jonesborough, TN; fiercely independent social critic and writer Anne Royall (born 1769), who would not sit down and shut up despite the best efforts of the patriarchy; or Rebecca Harding Davis, who in the mid-19th century wrote muckraking journalism about working conditions in iron mills of Wheeling, WV, before there was such a thing as muckraking journalism. Biggers's list is long, and it well repays the reader to follow it.
There is a caveat, though -- and this is the bad of the book: Biggers stretches the meaning of "Southern mountaineers" well beyond the breaking point. Granted, he is writing about the Appalachian region, which is largely and dramatically characterized by mountains, but its geographical "definition" is complex and shouldn't exclude the importance of its rivers, valleys, and cities. To take these elements and cram them into the "mountaineer" term does unfortunate violence to the ideal of conveying truth about the region.
In his passion (or haste) Biggers on occasion veers into outright error. For example, Myles Horton --co-founder of the legendary, activist Highlander Folk School -- is supposedly one of these mountaineers. According to Biggers, Horton's birthplace of Savannah, TN, is in the "eastern Tennessee mountains." This is nowhere near the case. Savannah is southeast of Jackson, TN, near the statelines both of Alabama and Mississippi. Regardless of how expansive one wants the cultural definition of Appalachia to be, geography is geography: Savannah, TN, is not in the eastern Tennessee mountains.
Nor did the Overmountain Men cross the Great Smokies to fight at Kings Mtn., as Biggers says. Nor -- finally explaining his book's title in the last chapter -- did Washington Irving's invocation of "Appalachia" as a possible replacement for "America" in the name for the country refer only to "our nation's southeastern mountain range." It referred to the entire Appalachian range, alternatively known as the Alleghanies, the sobriquet that Irving actually preferred.
But these factual faults are few. For the most part -- as far as I know -- Biggers gets the facts right. But there leaves the whole question of the larger meaning of Appalachia, or the Southern Appalachian mountains, that floats somewhere inside of Biggers's repetitive use of "mountaineers." There is something there, by implication, some kind of vague, cultural force. All it takes is for Biggers to invoke geography and as if by magic there is something binding all of the blessed efforts of these supposed mountaineers together.
To take the case of Adolph Ochs, who went from Chattanooga to New York to re-cast The New York Times into the newspaper of record it is today (yes, Donald Trump, once upon a time it was the struggling New York Times). What was the irreducible quality that Ochs possessed to accomplish this? Biggers says "the Chattanoogan brought his Southern Appalachian style of journalism into the national arena." By implication -- in a chapter shared with Anne Royall (see above) and path-breaking African-American abolitionist/separatist Martin Delany -- there is such a thing as a Southern Appalachian style of journalism. In reality this is simply to discover -- hiding in the most superficial kind of geographical link -- a spiritual quality conferred simply by living among the Southern mountains. I daresay that Ochs would be surprised to find out that he possessed it.
Biggers is best when he is writing about music. He does an excellent job of blowing up the stereotype of Appalachian music as just ballads and banjos. Exposing the label as just a marketing device from the early days of the mass marketing of country music, he insists on the essential contributions of African-Americans to Appalachian music. But his dragooning of the likes of W.C. Handy and Nina Simone into the ranks of "honorable exemplars" of the region will not do. In thinking about this, we must remember what Simone and Martin Delany had to escape. Nina Simone is not -- as Biggers would have it -- Appalachia contributing to the world. She is getting-the-hell-out of Appalachia contributing to the world. Given her career, we must wonder in what ways Simone's performance of the supposed mountain ballad "Black Is the Color" was a pointed, ironical decision. We have to remember that the human story of the Southern mountains is not about the triumph of the spirit of the mountains. It is rather about the power of people to enslave other people, to level the mountains, to rob and steal from them, and to violate a divine command to stewardship. Is it defeatism to acknowledge the rapacity of power over both humanity and geography? It points, rather, to the magnitude of the danger.
Rapacity is where Biggers leaves it, too, with a call to stop coal mining by mountaintop removal. I hope he will find many readers for his valuable book. But I also wish there had been a way to provide a more straightforward accounting of the record, one that did not rely on mystification and reductive labeling, however inspirational its intent.
The good is that Biggers sets out to combat the tendency -- even among informed people -- to allow the word "Appalachia" to summon up a very limited range of "honorable exemplars": "high lonesome singers and banjo players, black-faced coal miners, wizened front porch storytellers," as well as to "dwell on what has been done to Appalachia, rather than what Appalachia has contributed to the world." And he succeeds marvelously in marshaling his counter-force of honorable exemplars, many of them unknown even among informed people: early advocates of emancipation like Elihu Embree of Jonesborough, TN; fiercely independent social critic and writer Anne Royall (born 1769), who would not sit down and shut up despite the best efforts of the patriarchy; or Rebecca Harding Davis, who in the mid-19th century wrote muckraking journalism about working conditions in iron mills of Wheeling, WV, before there was such a thing as muckraking journalism. Biggers's list is long, and it well repays the reader to follow it.
There is a caveat, though -- and this is the bad of the book: Biggers stretches the meaning of "Southern mountaineers" well beyond the breaking point. Granted, he is writing about the Appalachian region, which is largely and dramatically characterized by mountains, but its geographical "definition" is complex and shouldn't exclude the importance of its rivers, valleys, and cities. To take these elements and cram them into the "mountaineer" term does unfortunate violence to the ideal of conveying truth about the region.
In his passion (or haste) Biggers on occasion veers into outright error. For example, Myles Horton --co-founder of the legendary, activist Highlander Folk School -- is supposedly one of these mountaineers. According to Biggers, Horton's birthplace of Savannah, TN, is in the "eastern Tennessee mountains." This is nowhere near the case. Savannah is southeast of Jackson, TN, near the statelines both of Alabama and Mississippi. Regardless of how expansive one wants the cultural definition of Appalachia to be, geography is geography: Savannah, TN, is not in the eastern Tennessee mountains.
Nor did the Overmountain Men cross the Great Smokies to fight at Kings Mtn., as Biggers says. Nor -- finally explaining his book's title in the last chapter -- did Washington Irving's invocation of "Appalachia" as a possible replacement for "America" in the name for the country refer only to "our nation's southeastern mountain range." It referred to the entire Appalachian range, alternatively known as the Alleghanies, the sobriquet that Irving actually preferred.
But these factual faults are few. For the most part -- as far as I know -- Biggers gets the facts right. But there leaves the whole question of the larger meaning of Appalachia, or the Southern Appalachian mountains, that floats somewhere inside of Biggers's repetitive use of "mountaineers." There is something there, by implication, some kind of vague, cultural force. All it takes is for Biggers to invoke geography and as if by magic there is something binding all of the blessed efforts of these supposed mountaineers together.
To take the case of Adolph Ochs, who went from Chattanooga to New York to re-cast The New York Times into the newspaper of record it is today (yes, Donald Trump, once upon a time it was the struggling New York Times). What was the irreducible quality that Ochs possessed to accomplish this? Biggers says "the Chattanoogan brought his Southern Appalachian style of journalism into the national arena." By implication -- in a chapter shared with Anne Royall (see above) and path-breaking African-American abolitionist/separatist Martin Delany -- there is such a thing as a Southern Appalachian style of journalism. In reality this is simply to discover -- hiding in the most superficial kind of geographical link -- a spiritual quality conferred simply by living among the Southern mountains. I daresay that Ochs would be surprised to find out that he possessed it.
Biggers is best when he is writing about music. He does an excellent job of blowing up the stereotype of Appalachian music as just ballads and banjos. Exposing the label as just a marketing device from the early days of the mass marketing of country music, he insists on the essential contributions of African-Americans to Appalachian music. But his dragooning of the likes of W.C. Handy and Nina Simone into the ranks of "honorable exemplars" of the region will not do. In thinking about this, we must remember what Simone and Martin Delany had to escape. Nina Simone is not -- as Biggers would have it -- Appalachia contributing to the world. She is getting-the-hell-out of Appalachia contributing to the world. Given her career, we must wonder in what ways Simone's performance of the supposed mountain ballad "Black Is the Color" was a pointed, ironical decision. We have to remember that the human story of the Southern mountains is not about the triumph of the spirit of the mountains. It is rather about the power of people to enslave other people, to level the mountains, to rob and steal from them, and to violate a divine command to stewardship. Is it defeatism to acknowledge the rapacity of power over both humanity and geography? It points, rather, to the magnitude of the danger.
Rapacity is where Biggers leaves it, too, with a call to stop coal mining by mountaintop removal. I hope he will find many readers for his valuable book. But I also wish there had been a way to provide a more straightforward accounting of the record, one that did not rely on mystification and reductive labeling, however inspirational its intent.
February 21, 2013
Fascinating read. Full of little-known information about, and contributions by, those from Appalachia from the early development of the USA to modern day, in the areas of social reform/rebellion, the arts, politics, the Press, industry, etc. Dozens and dozens of native Appalachians at the forefront of American history, and how many Americans know about them? I would have preferred, like others have said below, a bit more about West Virginian contributions (he does mention a few, e.g. Pearl Buck).
The best thing is that this book shatters all of the negative stereotypes about hillbillies that exist for once and for all, and praises the contributions of the Native Americans (here, mostly the Cherokee), as well.
The best thing is that this book shatters all of the negative stereotypes about hillbillies that exist for once and for all, and praises the contributions of the Native Americans (here, mostly the Cherokee), as well.
February 10, 2019
A very engaging read, pointing out Southern Appalachia's historical significance in the artistic and creative world, plus its central position in labor struggles, and its contributions to civil rights. Highly recommended.
December 5, 2008
Meh. No coherent argument or narrative to speak of here; worthwhile only in the sense that you'll learn a few interesting facts.
March 6, 2021
I’m from East Tennessee. So the word Appalachia has always had a nostalgic and historical significance to me. I have always attached the thought of early 1800s mountain people, moonshine, log cabins in the woods, Cherokee, Dollywood, and poverty. It’s part of the history of where I am from. I picked up this book to learn more because the region is fascinating in itself.
I wouldn’t say the author has any particular emotions about Appalachia. He, rather, gives us a bunch of famous or notorious people who are from there that carry the culture. Plus quotes for each chapter. Their was some historial happenings included but that didn’t hold my attention well or make me want to read farther. I found some tidbits interesting. I want to continue to read more about the history of Appalachia. I think it’s fascinating. I wouldn’t call this particular book the book on all that, but I found some interesting parts and skimmed thru.
I wouldn’t say the author has any particular emotions about Appalachia. He, rather, gives us a bunch of famous or notorious people who are from there that carry the culture. Plus quotes for each chapter. Their was some historial happenings included but that didn’t hold my attention well or make me want to read farther. I found some tidbits interesting. I want to continue to read more about the history of Appalachia. I think it’s fascinating. I wouldn’t call this particular book the book on all that, but I found some interesting parts and skimmed thru.
June 1, 2019
Rounded up from 2.5. Perhaps because this had been on my TBR list for a long time, I was a bit disappointed. The selected profiles in the Appalachian region's history are important, but they are described in such mock-academic fashion, with unnecessarily big (sometimes misused) words and awkward sentence structures, that the spirit and inspiration of this place and its people are lost. The epilogue, which I almost skipped, finally brings in some feeling, some connectedness through a few children of Appalachia that partially redeems it.
November 28, 2024
Another subtitle could be "How progressives saved Appalachia from the greedy capitalists and backwoods rubes". Apparently the only Appalachians worth celebrating by Biggers are those who thought and acted according to his worldview. Granted, there were injustices that needed to be fixed and there was (and is, everywhere) racism that needed to be eradicated. However, it wasn't just the progressives who were involved in the process. Additionally, he doesn't cover how various government programs, from the time of Reconstruction, actually made life worse for much of Appalachia.
July 5, 2018
An interesting history of the contributions and influences that the people from the Appalachia had on the United States. Last chapter was on the Highland School. Owner of New York Times, first abolitionists and a number of widely recognized writers of the different times.
May 2, 2019
This was the second time I’ve read this book and it’s definitely one of my favorites. Having roots in Appalachia and living in Appalachia I find the history fascinating, the culture, and everything about it. Definitely ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 24, 2025
This was very enlightening -- I learned a lot and gained new perspectives about American history and the significant role that Appalachia played in it. My only quibble is I wish there had been some illustrations, such as relevant maps, photos, and documents such as Sequoya's syllabary.
March 11, 2024
Interesting collection of stories of famous residents of Appalachia - and their cultural impact on the US (and the World).
June 27, 2025
amazing how much we hillbillies have contributed to the culture of our beloved mountains, rivers and streams
October 25, 2011
Some of the facts were wrong. If Biggers was truly a student of Appalachia history, he would not have confused Charles Town, WV with Charleston, WV. He also would have touched on & mention more of West Virginia's history. After all, West Virginia is the only state that is truly & purely Appalachian. Next time Biggers does write a book, he better check himself & his facts.
Read
July 17, 2012I gave up on it. From an academic perspective, it leave something to be desired, such as footnotes. There are other books that argue, much more convincingly, of the uniqueness and character of the Appalachian region.
August 13, 2014
Jeff tells a great story in this book. He draws on numerous sources and personal experiences exploring Appalachia. His book relates the story of Appalachian people, the lives and struggles, and the outside forces which impact their fortunes.
Want to read
August 28, 2007Heard about this on NPR
June 7, 2013
I have review notes on Facebook which I need to retrieve and insert here.
August 19, 2013
Written in a pro- Appalachian point of view, this book gives new insight into who the Appalachians are. I would recommend this book, especially to the people of this book, Appalacians.
September 14, 2015
The first several chapters were of interest to me but the remainder was not.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews