A reading list to take you beyond Hillbilly Elegy.
363.73 GRI
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America / Eliza Griswold
Prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.
305.562 APP
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
“The essays and creative work collected in [this book] provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicated simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusive with death and decay, [this book] makes clear Appalachia’s intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities.”
BIO WILSON | Adult New Shelf
August Wilson: A Life / Patti Hartigan
This is the first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the last fifty years, by a theater critic who knew him. In addition to Wilson’s career, Hartigan details his family lineage starting in the mountain town of Spear, North Carolina, providing insights into his plays and perspective on “blood memory.”
305.5 QUA
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream / Alissa Quart
An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled.
339.4609 EDI
The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America / Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Schaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson
Three of the nation’s top scholars, known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America, turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Taking a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there. This revelation set in motion their five-year journey across Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas.
EBOOK
Mossback / David Michael Pritchett
Pritchett traverses geography, history, and genealogy to explore landscapes and mythologies at the intersection of environmental, indigenous, and social justice. This collection of a dozen essays searches the terrain—from the heart of a swamp to the modern grid lines remaking our watersheds, to the tracks of the animals who share this earth, to the inner landscapes of the soul—to find glimpses of light in dark places and hope in painful legacies. Available as an ebook from hoopla.
362.293 MAC
Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis / Beth Macy
In this complex story of public health, big pharma, dark money, politics, race, and class, the New York Times best-selling author of Dopesick takes readers to the forefront of the opioid crisis where we meet the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose. Also available as an ebook from Libby/Overdrive.
BIO GOLDBACH
Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit / Eliese Colette Goldbach
Goldbach takes the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that took her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she’s come to love.
EBOOK
Something in These Hills / John M. Coggeshall
This ethnographic examination challenges contemporary theory and explores interrelated themes: the duality of the southern Appalachians as a majestic yet menacing landscape and the inhabitants’ emotional relationship to the land. To most outsiders, the area conjures images of a beautiful yet dangerous place, typified by the movie Deliverance. To longtime residents, these mountains have a fundamental emotional hold so powerful that many mourn the sale or loss of family land as if it were a deceased relative. Available as an ebook from hoopla.
641.5975 LUN
Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes / Ronni Lundy
This is an exploration of the foods, people, and places of Appalachia. Author Ronni Lundy is regarded as the most engaging authority on the region; his book guides readers through the surprisingly diverse history—and vibrant present—of food in the Mountain South. Victuals explores the region’s diverse and complex food scene through recipes, stories, traditions, and innovations. Each chapter focuses on a defining food or tradition such as salt, beans, and corn (including corn liquor).
975 CAT
What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia / Elizabeth Catte
An insider’s perspective on Appalachia, and a frank, ferocious assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and the problems of the region. Catte is a writer and historian from East Tennessee. She holds a PhD in public history and is the co-owner of a historical consulting and development company.
AI | July 2024
