Appalachian Free Spirit
Appalachian Free Spirit

Author: Duke Talbott

Publisher: Balboa Press

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1982232919

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Gnosticism, Buddhism, and Taoism coupled with the Twelve Steps provide a road to recovery for an Appalachian former Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia and infantry sergeant in Vietnam to find a new way of life salvaged from PTSD and the long-term addiction that followed in its aftermath. Draws on numerous letters written to the author’s parents from Somalia and Vietnam half a century ago.

A Narrative History of Wise County, Virginia
A Narrative History of Wise County, Virginia

Author: Charles A. Johnson

Publisher: The Overmountain Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 9780932807298

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This history is enriched with personal recollections and reminiscences. Its pages are filled with the names of those individuals who settled, or helped in some way to establish the County, as well as those who are remembered for various other reasons. The fifty-four illustrations include Wise County’s commonwealth attorneys, from the first (1856) to the twenty-first (1935).

Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920
Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920

Author: Barbara Rasmussen

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0813149355

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Absentee landowning has long been tied to economic distress in Appalachia. In this important revisionist study, Barbara Rasmussen examines the nature of landownership in five counties of West Virginia and its effects upon the counties' economic and social development. Rasmussen untangles a web of outside domination of the region that commenced before the American Revolution, creating a legacy of hardship that continues to plague Appalachia today. The owners and exploiters of the region have included Lord Fairfax, George Washington, and, most recently, the U.S. Forest Service. The overarching concern of these absentee landowners has been to control the land, the politics, the government, and the resources of the fabulously rich Appalachian Mountains. Their early and relentless domination of politics assured a land tax system that still favors absentee landholders and simultaneously impoverishes the state. Class differences, a capitalistic outlook, and an ethic of growth and development pervaded western Virginia from earliest settlement. Residents, however, were quickly outspent by wealthier, more powerful outsiders. Insecurity in landownership, Rasmussen demonstrates, is the most significant difference between early mountain farmers and early American farmers everywhere.

Stranger Citizens
Stranger Citizens

Author: John McNelis O'Keefe

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1501756532

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Stranger Citizens examines how foreign migrants who resided in the United States gave shape to citizenship in the decades after American independence in 1783. During this formative time, lawmakers attempted to shape citizenship and the place of immigrants in the new nation, while granting the national government new powers such as deportation. John McNelis O'Keefe argues that despite the challenges of public and official hostility that they faced in the late 1700s and early 1800s, migrant groups worked through lobbying, engagement with government officials, and public protest to create forms of citizenship that worked for them. This push was made not only by white men immigrating from Europe; immigrants of color were able to secure footholds of rights and citizenship, while migrant women asserted legal independence, challenging traditional notions of women's subordination. Stranger Citizens emphasizes the making of citizenship from the perspectives of migrants themselves, and demonstrates the rich varieties and understandings of citizenship and personhood exercised by foreign migrants and refugees. O'Keefe boldly reverses the top-down model wherein citizenship was constructed only by political leaders and the courts. Thanks to generous funding from the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot and the Mellon Foundation the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.