A ~ D
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Anderson, Clay, et al, AMERICAN MOUNTAIN PEOPLE. Wash DC: 1973, 1st edition, Nat. Geo. VG+ in G(spots,
minor tears)dj Green boards; illustrations $12.50
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Anonymous, A WAY OF LIFE:
Our Home in the Southern Appalachians. Kingsport: 1973, 1st edition,
Kingsport Press. VG Gold cloth; profusely illustrated; slipcase. $30.00
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Fisher, Ronald M., THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL. Wash DC: 1972, National Geographic. VG in G dj Oversize;
green boards; illustrations $20.00
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Fisher, Ronald M., THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL. Wash DC: 1973, 2nd printing, National Geographic. VG in G+
(a few spots, tears, chips, and shelf wear)dj green boards; illustrations $20.00
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Kocher, Sandra, APPALACHIAN TRAIL. Portland: 1979, 1st edition, Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co.
VG+/VG+ Green boards; profusely illustrated $30.00
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Sutton, Ann and Myron, THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL.
Philadelphia: 1967, 1st edition, JB Lippincott. VG in VG-(light shelf wear)dj Blue and grey boards;
illustrations $30.00
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Sutton, Ann and Myron, THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL.
Philadelphia: 1967, 1st edition, Lippincott. VG in VG- dj. Blue and grey cloth; many illustrations. $25.00
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Sutton, Ann and Myron, THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL.
Philadelphia: 1967, 3rd printing, JB Lippincott. VG - in G dj Blue and grey boards; illustrations $20.00
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Gayheart, Willard and Donia S. Eley,
WILLARD GAYHEART, APPALACHIAN ARTIST.
. NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK.
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003).
81 photographs, bibliography,
index, 199 pp.
~~~ Willard Gayheart, a pencil artist from eastern Kentucky who now lives in
southwestern Virginia, presents the history, people and culture of the
Appalachian region. This book combines a biography of Gayheart with a portfolio
of his work and his comments on his inspirations and techniques. His art has its
roots in his childhood and his memories of that time inspire him today. Gayheart
is also known for his portrayals of Appalachian musicians and ways of life, and
many such drawings are reproduced here.
$35.00
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Bartlett, Virginia K. KEEPING HOUSE: Women's Lives in Western Pennsylvania, 1790-1850. Pittsburgh:
1994, 2nd printing, U of Pgh Press. New 0822955385 large trade paperback; illustrations $17.50
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Bradshaw, Michael, THE APPALACHIAN REGIONAL COMMISSION: 25 Years of Government Policy. Lexington:
1992, 1st edition, U Press of Kentucky. VG in G+(light wear, minor tears)dj Green boards $17.50
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Breckinridge, Mary,
WIDE NEIGHBORHOODS: The Story of the Frontier Nursing Service. Lexington: 1981,
U of Kentucky Press. VG in VG-(light shelf wear) dj Orange boards; illustrations $30.00
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Brush, Frederic,
THE ALLEGHENIANS. NY: 1940, 1st edition, Blackshaw Press. G(1/2" near front corner
with light wear and water spot, back corner with 1/4" water spot) in G+(minor chips and tears)dj Green boards; scarce item $125.00
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Hall, Susan G,
APPALACHIAN OHIO AND THE CIVIL WAR, 1862-1863
.
. NEW copy, hardcover.
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006).
Photographs, maps, bibliography, index, 264 pp.
~~~ Oral history and memoirs preserve much more than a single event. They record
information about a time and a particular way of life. Buying a loaf of bread
for a dime and a 25-pound bag of flour for a dollar, walking 9 ½ miles in 5
hours, watching the Cove Creek gym (and several school buses) go up in
flames—these are just a few of the tales related in this collection of oral and
written histories. ~~~ From boating to a finding a first job, from riding a
pony to school to joining the Navy, this book contains dozens of memories
gathered from the residents of western Watauga County, North Carolina.
Concentrating primarily on the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, these
stories focus on the elements of everyday life in a mountain community. They
deal with both traditional rural activities—such as berry picking, soap making,
trading and bartering—and universal experiences such as school days and dating.
The book includes a special section on the war experiences of Watauga County
residents both at home and overseas. Contemporary photographs and an index are
included.
$45.00
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Clark, Joe, I REMEMBER. Kingsport, TN: 1969, 1st edition, Tennessee Squire Assoc. G(mild water damage)
Burlap boards; illustrations $12.50
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Clark, Joe, LYNCHBURG.
VG in VG- dust jacket (flaws to jacket do not show in photo). (TN: Tennessee Squire Press, 1971). 1st edition. White boards; oversize;
B&W photographs.
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AMERICAN MINING CONGRESS: COAL MODERNIZATION, 1953. Washington, DC: 1953, 1st edition, American
Mining Congress. VG- in G dj. Black cloth; profusely illustrated. $35.00
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Bartoletti, Susan Campbell,
GROWING UP IN COAL COUNTRY.
NEW copy. Textbook hardcover. (Houghton Mifflin, 1996).
Photographs, 128 pages.
~~~ Bartoletti uses oral history, archival documents, and an abundance of
black-and-white photographs to make turn-of-the-century mining life a
surprisingly compelling subject for today's young people. Zooming in on
northeastern Pennsylvania in general, and the perspective of children in
particular, she writes of the desperate working conditions, the deplorable
squalor found in the "patch villages," and the ever-present dangers of the
occupation. Stories of breaker-boy pranks and the roles of the animals at work
bring some comic relief, but even they point out the enormous hardships suffered
before there were effective unions and child-labor laws. The words and work of
children are weighted equally with the efforts of the Molly McGuires, Mother
Jones, and other adult players. Captioned, black-and-white photographs, with
attributions, appear on almost every page, allowing the images to play a
powerful role in the gritty story. The bibliography reveals the depth of
Bartoletti's research. An introduction conveys her motivation (fascination with
family stories), while a brief conclusion touches upon the region in the
post-World War I era. For a first-rate, accessible study of a time and place
that played an important role in American economic and social history, look no
further
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COAL MINING SUBSIDENCE ACT: 1991 Chapter 45
. NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK. (Bernan Associates).
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Dublin, Thomas,
WHEN THE MINES CLOSED: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times.
NEW copy, textbook PAPERBACK. (Cornell University Press, 1998).
Photographs, 304 pages.
~~~ The anthracite region of northeastern
Pennsylvania, five hundred square miles of
rugged hills stretching between Tower City and
Carbondale, harbored coal deposits that once heated
virtually all the homes and businesses in Eastern
cities. At its peak during World War I, the coal
industry here employed 170,000 miners, and supported
almost 1,000,000 people. Today, with coal workers
numbering 1,500, only 5,000 people depend on the
industry for their livelihood. Between these two points
in time lies a story of industrial decline, of working
people facing incremental and cataclysmic changes in
their world. When the Mines Closed tells this
story in the words of men and women who experienced
these dramatic changes and in more than eighty
photographs of these individuals, their
families, and the larger community.
~~~ Award-winning historian Thomas Dublin interviewed
a cross-section of residents and migrants from the
region, who gave their own accounts of their
work and family lives before and after the mines
closed. Most of the narrators, six men and seven women,
came of age during the Great Depression and
entered area mines or, in the case of the women,
garment factories, in their teens. They describe the
difficult choices they faced, and the long-standing
ethnic, working-class values and traditions they drew
upon, when after World War II the mines began to shut
down. Some left the region, others commuted to work at
a distance, still others struggled to find employment
locally. ~~~ The photographs taken by George Harvan,
a lifelong resident of the area and the son of a
Slovak-born coal miner, document residents' lives
over the course of fifty years. Dublin's introductory
essay offers a briefhistory of anthracite mining and
the region and establishes a broader interpretive
framework for the
narratives and photographs.
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Frazier, Claude M., MINERS AND MEDICINE: West Virginia Memories. Norman: 1992, 1st edition, U of OK
Press. Near fine/near fine Blue boards; illustrations.
~~~ The coal-company doctors of Appalachia fought the health hazards of the coal
fields, arguably the most dangerous and diseased working environment of the
modern world. Often the doctors were held accountable for evils that persisted
despite their best efforts. Claude A. Frazier - a coal-camp doctor's son and a
doctor himself - draws on the memories of health workers, miners, and their
families to convey the horrific problems in the coal camps, the resourcefulness
of the doctors and nurses, and the struggle to raise health standards in and
around the mines. Doctor Frazier tells how, from the Civil War to World War II,
Appalachian mountain folk were exploited in a feudal system ruled by the coal
companies. The miners, always in debt to the company, paid for a doctor's
services with a checkoff from wages. The company doctor, like the company store,
school, and church, was a consequence of the poor transportation and poverty in
the wild mountains and narrow valleys where King Coal reigned. Miners and
Medicine recalls not only the coal-camp doctors who were incompetent but the
many others who performed valiant service in conditions that seem impossible by
today's standards - in tiny, polluted communities with no nearby hospital or
pharmacy, precious few nurses, and nonexistent sanitary facilities. Often the
miners' wives and children, whose stories are told here, went hungry in drafty,
pest-ridden company housing, from which they were expelled if they had no family
member working in the mine. Boys went to work as teen-agers until child-labor
laws finally were enforced in the 1950s. Black lung shortened the lives of
virtually all miners. Miners and Medicine relates participants' memories of how
the company doctors competed with the grannies, yarb doctors, and
patent-medicine men, ultimately bringing stable health care and community
hospitals to northern Appalachia. Today the company towns have been abandoned or
brought up to date, thanks in good part to the company do
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Hume, Brit, DEATH AND THE MINES: Rebellion and Murder in the UMW. NY: 1971, 1st edition, Grossman.
VG-(sticker to flyleaf) in VG- dj Brown boards; illustrations $30.00
~~ "...the unbelievable story of what transpired in the United Mine Workers (UMW) through the 1960s
following the retirement of John L. Lewis. The report starts with CONSOL's
Farmington, WV, mine disaster, moves onto the Black Lung struggle, and unwinds
the intricate dealings of the UMW during the days of President Tony Boyle. It
culminates with the murder of Jock Yablonski, who had risen with the the support
of rank and file miners to challenge Boyle's reign."
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Lainhart, W.S., et al, PNEUMOCONIOSIS IN APPALACHIAN BITUMINOUS COAL MINERS. Cincinnati: 1969, 1st
edition, US Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare. Near fine Oversize; pictorial boards $200.00
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Giesen, Carol,
ABOVE THE SLATE: An Appalachian Love Story.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK.
(Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2002).
256 pages.
~~~ When Neva and Grady marry, she dreams of owning their own home, while he dreams
of organizing his fellow coal miners to fight for their rights. Above the Slate
follows the twists and turns of the couple's life together--their birthing and
grieving, their hoping and hiding from the law. Throughout it all, Neva and
Grady remain committed to different, often conficting dreams. ~~~ A down-to-earth account,
Above the Slate is told in the pain and earthy voices of a
husband and wife who struggle against the harsh realities of Appalachian coal
country in the 1930s. Imprisonment and escape, the death of one child, the birth
of three, and a tragic mine explosion give the story structure; an honest
portrayal of family relationships gives it heart.
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O'Dell, Tawni,
COAL RUN.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. FICTION.
(Penguin Group, 2004). 354 pages.
~~~ From Kirkus Reviews: "Triumphantly
fulfilling the promise of her bestselling debut
(Back Roads), O'Dell examines the
tangled, enduring bonds of family and community in a
Pennsylvania mining town.
After 16 years in Florida, Ivan Zoschenko has come back to Coal Run as deputy to
its easygoing sheriff, who seems unfazed by his crippled knee and heavy
drinking. To the locals, Ivan is still the legendary college football player
destined for the pros until he injured himself in a freak accident at the
abandoned mine where his father and 96 other men died in an explosion when Ivan
was 6. The sense of having let them down drove him to drink and to Florida, but
as the story unfolds in a narrative that mingles present-day action with Ivan's
memories, we realize that guilt over a graver misdeed also fuels his
self-destructive behavior. Once again, O'Dell inhabits a male mind with
sensitivity and acuity. Ivan's cluelessness about women would seem improbable if
his first-person narration didn't reveal emotional scars that blinker his
probing intelligence. The author surrounds her hero with full-bodied, vividly
rendered characters: his proudly sexual, fiercely independent sister; the
Vietnam vet he adored as a boy; his uncomplaining mother, irreparably wounded by
her beloved husband's death; and Reese Raynor, Ivan's dark shadow, who beat his
young wife into a coma and whose release from jail propels the plot. O'Dell
doesn't soften the lasting damage inflicted on Coal Run and its inhabitants by
the J&P Coal Company (all the more contemptible because the characters take
it for granted), but against it she sets a passionate affirmation of the
communal ties that send the local doctor out to give vaccinations to poor
kidsand bring everyone to the old mine each year for a memorial service to the
dead miners. The tendency to melodrama that occasionally marred her first book
is transformed here into a searing tragic vision of working-class people whose
dignity comes from stoically doing their jobs, a phrase repeated with increasing
resonance as the novel closes with the suggestion that Ivan can now move toward
reconciliation with the past and hope for the future. Powerful and
uncompromising, yet radiant with love: this one's pretty close to a masterpiece.
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Pack, Clyde,
MUDDY BRANCH: Memories of an Eastern Kentucky Coal
Camp.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK.
(Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2002).
256 pages.
~~~ Muddy Branch is a memoir of Clyde
Roy Pack’s growing-up years in Muddy Branch
coal camp deep in Eastern Kentucky. It is the story
of a boy, a place, and a time, offering a taste of
time sweet as honey, when the term “bored” had to
do with something a man did with an auger. ~~~ There
is in much retrospective writing—particularly
concerning Appalachia—a tendency to romanticize
the rural setting of the past and our parents’ and
grandparents’ struggles with same. Conversely, the
other pitfall is to engage in the kind of
deconstruction that always tempts us when we look
at the past from the perspective of the present.
Clyde Roy has done neither. Instead, he has simply
set his own truth to paper as faithfully as memory
can trace it. It rings true to the Appalachian -—
every time.
~~~ When Clyde Roy Pack weaves his insightful and evocative tales of growing up
in the coal camp known as Muddy Branch, he knows whereof he speaks. He spent his
first eighteen years there and the spirit, feeling and atmosphere of that place
in that time has clearly left its imprint. Here he has set to paper a coal camp
story that creates a fresh picture of our place and our people -— folks who
accepted hardship, believed in the Lord, and labored long so that their kids
could walk an easier path.
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Pfleider, Eugene P., ed.,
SURFACE MINING. NY: 1972, American Institute of Mining. VG in G(tears,
creases) Brown boards; profusely illustrated; dense $30.00
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PRACTICAL KINKS FOR COAL MINING MEN. NY: c.1950, NY, Coal Age. VG- Black boards; profusely
illustrated $45.00
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Reese, Jack B.,
GRUBBING THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH. Smithfield, PA: 1988, 1st edition, Reese. VG-(light
crease to one corner) Trade pb; scarce self-published book by PA/WV miner $30.00
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Sayles, John,
MATEWAN (Promotional Package). Hollywood: ca. 1987, 1st edition, Red Dgo Films. VG-(light
wear) Stapled promo info of 20pp; with 7 stills from the movie $35.00
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Sayles, John, THINKING IN PICTURES: The Making of the Movie Matewan. Boston: 1987, 8th printing,
Houghton Mifflin. VG- Trade PAPERBACK; illustrations $22.50
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Shogan, Robert,
THE BATTLE OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. (Westview Press).
271 pages.
~~~ Shogan depicts the relatively unrecognized but highly dramatic confrontation
culminating at Blair Mountain in West Virginia, between unionized mineworkers,
mine owners, and the federal government in the largest armed uprising since the
Civil War.
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Vaughn, James,
BANKMULES: The Story of Van Lear, A Kentucky Coal Town.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket.
(Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2003).
256 pages.
~~~ In the summer of 1934, the town of Van Lear seemed an idyllic place to young
James Vaughan and his buddies, even though it was also the time of the Great
Depression. Here in this personal account, an older Vaughan shares his warm
memories of growing up in Van Lear and recalls many incidents from the history
of the town—a town created by the Consolidation Coal Company to serve its new
mines along Millers Creek. ~~~ Drawing on his own recollections and on many
interviews, Vaughan recreates Van Lear in its heyday from 1910 to 1940 when it
was a prosperous community of 3,000 people—the largest in the county—and when
the Bankmules athletic teams, so-called from the mules that hauled coal from the
coal seams or “banks,” were the pride of the town. He tells of the games and
amusements enjoyed with his boyhood buddies, of lessons and school, of his
friends and family, of the dark day in 1935 when a mine explosion took the lives
of his father and eight other miners. He describes the town itself—the company
store and the club house, the different neighborhoods and hollers—and also the
men who shaped the town—mine manager Jack Price who fostered the schools and the
teams, Doctors Hall and Lyon who took care of the miners and their families, and
the teachers and superintendents of the schools who provided a solid education
for the children of Van Lear. Though many writers have criticized coal towns as
depressing and poverty-stricken, for Vaughan and others, Van Lear was altogether
different—a good place to live, a good place for children to grow up. ~~~ Sadly,
with the depletion of the coal, the town declined, and, in the 1950s,
Consolidation sold off all its properties and abandoned the town. In the latter
part of the book, Vaughan describes the valiant efforts of a small group of
individuals to preserve the heritage of Van Lear by the creation of a museum and
a historical society, and the publication of a newsletter devoted to the town’s
history. James Vaughan has written a memorable story of a town and a part of
Kentucky history that is fast disappearing.
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Wallace, Anthony FC,
ST. CLAIR: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with
a Disaster-Prone Industry.
Textbook PAPERBACK. (Cornell University Press, 1987).
519 pages. (St. Clair is in Pennsylvania).
~~~ From the New York Times Book Review: 'Monumental... A book of grand scale and impressive accomplishment... Wallace
has revised our image of 19th-century industrial development... Displaying his
professional anthropologist's eye for telling detail, as well as the sort of
prodigious research and sense of plot and character development more often found
in the work of historians and novelists, (he) has demonstrated that the history
of our smallest towns speaks to some of the largest questions of our past and
present.'
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Williams, Tennessee,
CANDLES TO THE SUN: A Play in Ten Scenes.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK. (New Directions, 2004).
128 pages.
~~~ The first full-length play by novice
playwright Thomas Lanier Williams to be
produced, Candles to the Sun was premiered by
The Mummers, a semi-professional and socially aware
theatre troupe in St. Louis on March 18, 1937, and
received rave reviews in the local press. Set in the
Red Hills coal mining section of Alabama and dealing
with both the attempts of the miners to
unionize and the bleak lives of their families, the
play, according to St. Louis Star-Times critic
Reed Hynds, is "an earnest and searching examination of
a particular social reality set out in human and
dramatic terms." ~~~ Working principally from a
script supplied by Jane Garrett Carter (who played
Star in the original production), Dan Isaac, as he did
in his edition of another "early" Williams' play,
Spring Storm, uses his directorial and
scholarly skills to prepare a version as close as
possible to the 1937 production while
providing contemporary readers (or actors) with the
necessary social, political and theatrical context to
make the play accessible and relevant once more.
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Coleman, Jr., J. Winston,
STAGE-COACH DAYS IN THE BLUEGRASS. Lexington: 2nd edition, 2nd edition,
U press of Kentucky. As new/as new Brown boards; illustrations $22.50
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Conley, Phil,
THE WEST VIRGINIA ENCYCLOPEDIA. Charleston: 1929, 1st edition, WV Pub. Co. G(boards with
water stains, old price to flyleaf, signature to flyleaf--else VG) Red boards; dense; illustrations $50.00
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Connelly, Thomas L., DISCOVERING THE APPALACHIANS. Harrisburg: 1968, 1st edition, Stackpole Books. VG
in VG-(light wear)dj Oversize; gold boards; profusely illustrated $35.00
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Cooper, Leland R. and Mary Lee Cooper (eds),
THE POND MOUNTAIN CHRONICLE: Self-portrait of a Southern Appalachian
Community. NEW copy.
Trade PAPERBACK. (Jefferson: McFarland, 1998).
56 photographs, maps, index, 252 pp.
~~~ Located in the area where North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee meet, Pond
Mountain rises to over 4,000 feet. In its valley it holds the Pond Mountain
community, a small area in Ashe County, North Carolina. Most of the families
that live in the valley have been there for generations, farming the land. Here
31 Pond Mountain residents reflect on their childhoods, families, neighbors,
customs and traditions, and the changes that have come to their mountain
communities. What emerges is a unique look at a way of life that is rapidly
being lost to history.
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Crain, Jim and Terry Milne, CAMPING AROUND THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS. Berkeley: 1975, 1st edition,
Bookworks. VG-(light wear) Oversize trade pb; illustrations $17.50
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Crissman, James G., DEATH AND DYING IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA: Changing Attitudes and Practices. Urbana:
1994, 1st edition, U of IL Press. Near fine Trade pb; illustrations $14.50
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Cross the Pond Committee, CROSS THE POND. Morgantown: 1977, 1st edition, Cross. VG Stapled pb
$20.00
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Davis, Skeeter, BUS FARE TO KENTUCKY: The Autobiography. Secaucus: 1992, 3rd printing, Birch Lane.
VG+/VG+ Blue boards; illustrations $20.00
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Demerest, David P., FROM THESE HILLS, FROM THESE VALLEYS: Selected Fiction about Western Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh: 1979, 1st edition, U of Pittsburgh Press. VG in VG(2 minor chips, 2 minor tears)dj. Brown boards; illustrations; includes Willa Cather, Thomas Bell and Conrad Richter $20.00
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Dickey, James and William A. Bahe, WAYFARER: A Voice from the Southern Mountains. Birmingham: 1988,
1st edition, Oxmoor House. VG+/VG+ Maroon boards; oversize; profusely illustrated $40.00
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Doolittle, Jerome, THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. NY: 1975, Time Life. VG+ Pictorial boards; oversize;
profusely illustrated $25.00
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Doolittle, Jerome, THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. NY: 1975, 1st edition, Timelife. VG Pictorial boards;
illustrations; oversize $20.00
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Dupuy, Edward and Emma Weaver, ARTISANS OF THE APPALACHIANS. Asheville: 1971, 4th printing, Miller
Printing. VG(signature to endpaper) in G-(tears, spots)dj Brown boards; oversize; illustrations $35.00
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