Write-Ups

Abstract

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Write-Ups George Brosi Kevin Adams. North Carolina Waterfalls: A Hiking and Photography Guide. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Publisher, 2005. 590 pages with index, maps, color photos, notes. Paperback. $19.95. What a wonderful guide book! Every entry includes not only excellent directions and descriptions, and notes designed to be helpful to photographers, but also rates the location. Fabulous! This is Kevin Adams' sixth book. He lives in High Point, North Carolina. Darlene Applegate and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., Editors. Woodland Period Systematics In the Middle Ohio Valley. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2005. 288 pages with preface, maps, photos, tables, references, contributors notes, and index. Paperback. $32.95. This book is a collection of scholarly articles that came out of archeological symposia in 2002 and 2003. The time period illuminated is between 1000 BC and 1000 AD, and the Middle Ohio Valley includes northeastern Kentucky and northwestern West Virginia as well as southern Ohio and extreme Southeastern Indiana. Darlene Applegate teaches at Western Kentucky University, and Robert Mainfort teaches at the University of Arkansas. Darnell Arnoult. What Travels With Us: Poems. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. 56 pages. Paperback. $16.95. "Edgar Lee Masters would be proud. In the . . . style of Spoon River Anthology, Arnoult's moving collection presents a whole village full of people brought to three-dimensional life in spare, conversational poems ." - Patricia Monaghan in Booklist. The town is Fieldale, Virginia, in the foothills, populated by transplanted Appalachian mountain folk, the community where the poet was raised. Darnell Arnoult currently lives on a small farm outside Nashville, Tennessee. Sandra L. Ballard and Haeja K. Chung, Editors. The Collected Short Stories of Harriette Simpson Arnow. East Lansing, MI: Michigan 106 State University Press, 2005. 259 pages with works cited and notes. Paperback. $24.95. Harriette Simpson Arnow (1908-1986), is, of course, one of the greatest writers ever to come out of the Appalachian region, best known as the author of The Dollmaker (1954), and five other novels as well as three important non-fiction works. This volume collects her stories in book form for the first time, marking an important milestone in regional literature. "Her collected short stories are not only a valuable literary document, but also a wonderfully readable book . . . readers will be swept along; scholars will be fascinated." - Fred Chappell. "Ballard and Chung's introductory essay is a model of literary scholarship and criticism—intelligent, lucid, and measured in its appraisal of Arnow's too long neglected short fiction." - Ron Rash. Sandy Ballard is the editor of Appalachian Journal published by Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She is working on an authorized biography of Arnow. Wendell Berry. BlessedAre the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings About Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. 68 pages. Paperback. $8.00. In this little book, Wendell Berry selects the sayings of Jesus, separated into the four gospels of the Bible from which they were taken, which he believes to be most worthy not just of study but emulation. It begins and closes with essays by Wendell Berry to introduce and contextualize the quotations. The author and his wife, Tanya, farm organically with horses on the Kentucky River near where he was raised. Berry is a widely respected advocate of living in harmony with the land. A former professor, he is the author of more than forty books, including poetry, fiction and essays. Jeff Biggers. The United States ofAppalachia: How Southern Mountaineers BroughtIndependence, Culture, andEnlightenmenttoAmerica. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard Publishers, 2006. 238 pages with index, bibliographic notes, map, preface, prologue, and epilogue . Hardback in dustjacket. $26.00. As co-editor, with George Brosi, of No Lonesome Road: The Prose and Poetry of Don West (2004), Jeff Biggers immersed himself in the perspective of Don West, including West's conviction that Southern Mountaineers have a strong tradition of fighting for freedom. This book is the result of the further study which Biggers did to flesh out West's vision. It presents quite readable vignettes of a wide variety 107 of individuals and groups of people from the mountains who have made a tremendous difference to the nation as a whole...