Bücher der Reihe West Virginia & Appalachia

Takes stock of the field of Appalachian studies as it explores issues still at the centre of its scholarship: culture, industrialization, the labour movement, and twentieth-century economic and political failure and their social impact. A new generation of scholars continues the work of Appalachian studies' pioneers, exploring the diversity and complexity of the region and its people.

This 1910 study of sectionalism in Virginia illustrates how the east and west of Virginia were destined to separate into two states. Barbara Rasmussen, professor of Public History at West Virginia University has written a new introduction, setting Ambler's grand achievement into the context of its production by creating an historical process for studying West Virginia history.

West Virginia is one of the most homogeneous states in the nation, with among the lowest ratios of foreign-born and minority populations among the states. But as this collection of historical studies demonstrates, this state was built by successive waves of immigrant labours, from the antebellum railroad builders to the twentieth-century coal miners.

In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia.

Examines the rise and fall of organised socialism in West Virginia through an exploration of the demographics of membership, oral interview material gathered in the 1960s from party members, and the collapse of the party in 1912. Ths volume offers insight into the internal and external forces that doomed the party and serves as a cautionary tale to contemporary political leaders and organisers.

In They'll Cut Off Your Project, Huey Perry reveals his efforts to help the poor of an Appalachian community challenge a local regime. He describes this community's attempts to improve school programmes and conditions, establish cooperative grocery stores, and expose electoral fraud. Along the way, Perry unfolds the local authority's hostile backlash to such change.

Recounts the difficulties the state of West Virginia faced during the post-World War II period. While documenting this turmoil, this valuable analysis also traces the efforts of the New Frontier and Great Society programmes, which stimulated maximum feasible participation and lead to the ultimate rise of grass roots activities and organisations that improved life and labour in the region.

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Monongah, West Virginia mine disaster, the West Virginia University Press is honored to carry Davitt McAteer's definitive history of the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. "Monongah" documents the events that led to the explosion, which claimed hundreds of lives on the morning of December 6, 1907.Nearly thirty years of exhaustive research have led McAteer to the conclusion that close to 500 men and boys--many of them immigrants--lost their lives that day, leaving hundreds of women widowed and more than one thousand children orphaned. McAteer delves deeply into the personalities, economic forces, and social landscape of the mining communities of north central West Virginia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tragedy at Monongah led to a greater awareness of industrial working conditions, and ultimately to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which Davitt McAteer helped to enact.

In the early nineteenth century, a ten-mile stretch along the Kanawha River in western Virginia became the largest salt-producing area in the antebellum United States. In his illuminating study, now available with a new preface by the author, John Stealey examines the legal basis of this industry, its labour practices, and its marketing and distribution patterns.

Provides insight into how mountaintop removal has affected the people and the land of southern West Virginia. It examines the mechanization of the mining industry and the power relationships between coal interests, politicians, and the average citizen.

Provides the first comprehensive history of the area, beginning in the late eighteenth century continuing up to the "Matewan Massacre". It covers the relevant economic history, including the development of the coal mine industry and the struggles over land ownership; labour history; transportation history; political history; and the impact of the state's governors and legislatures on Mingo County.

In 1986 Lon Savage published Thunder in the Mountains, a popular history now considered a classic. When Savage passed away, he left behind an incomplete book manuscript about a lesser-known Mother Jones crusade in Kanawha County. His daughter Ginny drew on his notes and files, and her own research, to complete this book-length account of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-13.

Examines the economic and social conditions of the state of West Virginia before, during, and after the Great Depression. Jerry Bruce Thomas's exploration of personal papers by political and social figures, newspapers, and the published and unpublished records of federal, state, local, and private agencies, traces a region's response to an economic depression and a presidential stimulus programme.

In Afflicting the Comfortable, Thomas Stafford relates tales of the responsibility of journalism and politics in coordination with scandals that have unsettled the West Virginia over the past few decades. His probing would take him from the halls of Charleston to the centre of the US's ruling elite.