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West Virginia University Press is the only university press, and the largest publisher of any kind, in the state of West Virginia. A part of West Virginia University, they publish books and scholarly journals by authors around the world, with a particular emphasis on Appalachian studies, history, higher education, the social sciences, and interdisciplinary books about energy, environment, and resources. They also publish works of fiction and creative nonfiction, and collaborate on innovative digital publications, notably West Virginia History: An Open Access Reader.

Showing 201-250 of 279 items.

No.9

The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster

West Virginia University Press

Ninety-nine men entered the cold, dark tunnels of the Consolidation Coal Company’s No.9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, on November 20, 1968. Some were worried about the condition of the mine. It had too much coal dust, too much methane gas. They knew that either one could cause an explosion. What they did not know was that someone had intentionally disabled a safety alarm on one of the mine’s ventilation fans. That was a death sentence for most of the crew. The fan failed that morning, but the alarm did not sound. The lack of fresh air allowed methane gas to build up in the tunnels. A few moments before 5:30 a.m., the No.9 blew up. Some men died where they stood. Others lived but suffocated in the toxic fumes that filled the mine. Only 21 men escaped from the mountain.

 No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster explains how such a thing could happen—how the coal company and federal and state officials failed to protect the 78 men who died in the mountain. Based on public records and interviews with those who worked in the mine, No.9 describes the conditions underground before and after the disaster and the legal struggles of the miners’ widows to gain justice and transform coal mine safety legislation.

  • Copyright year: 2011
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New Deal Photographs of West Virginia, 1934-1943

Edited by Betty Rivard; Foreword by Carl Fleischhauer; Introduction by Jerry B. Thomas
West Virginia University Press

Upon entering the White House in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced an ailing economy in the throes of the Great Depression and rushed to transform the country through recovery programs and legislative reform. By 1934, he began to send professional photographers to the state of West Virginia to document living conditions and the effects of his New Deal programs. The photographs from the Farm Security Administration Project not only introduced “America to Americans,” exposing a continued need for government intervention, but also captured powerful images of life in rural and small town America.
New Deal Photographs of West Virginia, 1934-1943 presents images of the state’s northern and southern coalfields, the subsistence homestead projects of Arthurdale, Eleanor, and Tygart Valley, and various communities from Charleston to Clarksburg and Parkersburg to Elkins. With over one hundred and fifty images by ten FSA photographers, including Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and Ben Shahn, this collection is a remarkable proclamation of hardship, hope, endurance, and, above all, community. These photographs provide a glimpse into the everyday lives of West Virginians during the Great Depression and beyond.

  • Copyright year: 2012
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History of the American Negro

West Virginia Edition

By A. B. Caldwell; Introduction by Joe Trotter
West Virginia University Press, West Virginia Classics

History of the American Negro: West Virginia Edition is a collection of biographies of African American men and women at the beginning of the twentieth century. Edited and published by A. B. Caldwell, the History of the American Negro collection includes seven volumes that richly describe the lives of citizens in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, DC, and West Virginia.  In a statement printed in the first volume of this series, Caldwell wrote that his intent in publishing this collection was neither “comprehensive nor exhaustive,” yet he was determined to shed light on the  “successful element unrecorded” of black Americans in the United States. As the 7th volume in Caldwell’s collection, History of the American Negro: West Virginia Edition chronicles the struggles and triumphs of everyday African Americans in West Virginia during the post−World War I era.  A resource for genealogists, historians, and citizens alike, this history provides a detailed account of the often overlooked lives of ordinary men and women.

  • Copyright year: 2012
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Centerville

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press

It is 1967 at the end of a long, hot summer. On a Saturday afternoon in Centerville, a sleepy Midwestern town, a disaffected husband enters a busy drugstore where his estranged wife works and sets a bag with a homemade bomb on the floor. Outside the drugstore, a fourteen-year-old girl places her hand on the door, then inexplicably turns away and keeps walking. Moments later, standing safely inside a bowling alley with her best friend, she hears a sound like thunder. With one devastating explosion, the town is changed forever. In the next few days, four lives become entwined, as the townspeople face sudden loss and new, unpredictable realities. Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and the escalating Vietnam War, Centerville forms an engrossing meditation on the complex questions that arise in the wake of senseless violence.

  • Copyright year: 2012
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The Backyard Brawl

Stories from One of the Weirdest, Wildest, Longest Running, and Most Instense Rivalries in College Football History

West Virginia University Press

The West Virginia University Mountaineers and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers, separated by less than eighty miles of highway, have battled it out on the football field for more than one hundred years. Now, with Pitt announcing its departure from the Big East Conference to join the Atlantic Coast Conference and West Virginia becoming a member of the Big 12 Conference, this intense rivalry has come to an abrupt end. Thousands of players and dozens of coaches - some among the very best to ever play the game - have been a part of this famous series known as the “Backyard Brawl.”  With fantastic tales about this feud’s star-studded rosters, including  White, Slaton, Harris, Luck, Huff, Nehlen, and Rodriguez for West Virginia and Fitzgerald, Marino, Dorsett, Green, Majors, and Sherrill for Pitt, The Backyard Brawl celebrates the tradition, heritage, and pride of two outstanding universities. With unparalleled access, John Antonik, a 20-year West Virginia University athletic administrator and WVU alumnus, unearths the fascinating and humorous stories that make up this revered, colorful, and cherished football game-and more importantly, the great passion and pride these schools exhibit every time they take the field.

  • Copyright year: 2012
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

A Close Verse Translation

Edited by Larry D. Benson; Foreword by Daniel Donoghue
West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2012
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Working Class Radicals

The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898-1920

West Virginia University Press

Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898-1920 examines the rise and fall of organized 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 the wake of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek coal-mining strike of 1912.  The first local branch of the West Virginia Socialist Party was established in Wheeling in 1901 and by 1914 several thousand West Virginians were dues-paying members of local branches. By 1910 local Socialists began to elect candidates to office and in 1912 more than 15,000 West Virginian voters cast their ballots for Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. The progress that West Virginia socialists achieved on the electoral front was a reflection of the party’s strategy of increasing class-consciousness by working with existing unions to build the power of the labor movement. The party appealed to a fairly broad cross section of wage earners and its steady growth also owed much to the fact that many members of the middle class were attracted to the cause. Several factors combined to send the party into rapid decline, most importantly deep fissures between class and craft factions of the party and 1915 legislation making third party political participation difficult. Working Class Radicals offers insight into the various internal and external forces that doomed the party and serves as a cautionary tale to contemporary political leaders and organizers.
 

  • Copyright year: 2012
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The Scummers

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
  • Copyright year: 2011
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SCREAMING WITH THE CANNIBALS

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
  • Copyright year: 2004
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Crum

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
  • Copyright year: 2003
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West Virginia

Its Farms and Forests, Mines and Oil-Wells

By J. R. Dodge; Introduction by Kenneth R. Bailey
West Virginia University Press, West Virginia Classics

West Virginia: Its Farms and Forests, Mines and Oil-Wells celebrates the state of West Virginia. Originally published in 1865 as a series of studies on mineral resources, observations on agriculture, and interviews with businessmen, West Virginia details the industrial statistics, terrain, and population of a state during its infancy. With no record of natural wealth or reported transactions of agriculture or geography prior to this overview, West Virginia sparked the curiosity of non-residents, enticing investment and settlement through descriptions of abundant natural resources and an agreeable industrial condition. With an introduction by Kenneth R. Bailey, this new edition reminds us of the state’s alluring beginning and rich, yet often exploited development.
 

  • Copyright year: 2011
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Ugly to Start With

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press

Jason Stevens is growing up in picturesque, historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in the 1970s. Back when the roads are smaller, the cars slower, the people more colorful, and Washington, D.C. is way across the mountains—a winding sixty-five miles away.
 
Jason dreams of going to art school in the city, but he must first survive his teenage years. He witnesses a street artist from Italy charm his mother from the backseat of the family car. He stands up to an abusive husband—and then feels sorry for the jerk. He puts up with his father’s hard-skulled backwoods ways, his grandfather’s showy younger wife, and the fist-throwing schoolmates and eccentric mountain characters that make up Harpers Ferry—all topped off by a basement art project with a girl from the poor side of town.
 
Ugly to Start With punctuates the exuberant highs, bewildering midpoints, and painful lows of growing up, and affirms that adolescent dreams and desires are often fulfilled in surprising ways.

  • Copyright year: 2011
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The Shenandoah

By Julia Davis; Introduction by Christopher Camuto
West Virginia University Press, West Virginia Classics

In 1945, West Virginia author Julia Davis penned The Shenandoah as part of the Rivers of America Series, a landmark collection of books written by literary figures over a period of thirty years. In this classic reprint, now with an introduction by Christopher Camuto, Davis tells the history of the Shenandoah Valley and River, drawing on her own research and the experiences of ancestors who settled and lived in the area. Her book provides a poetic vision of both the river and the valley, preserving a fragment of America’s landscape.

  • Copyright year: 2011
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Uncommon Vernacular

The Early Houses of Jefferson County, West Virginia, 1735-1835

West Virginia University Press

Within the picturesque borders of Jefferson County, West Virginia remain the vestiges of a history filled with Civil War battles and political rebellion. Yet also woven into the historical landscapeof this small county nestled within the Shenandoah Valley is an unusual collection of historic homes. 
 
In this fascinating architectural exploration, John C. Allen, Jr. details his expansive seven-year survey of Jefferson County’s historic residences. By focusing on dwellings built from the mid-eighteenth century to the arrival of the railroad and canal in 1835, Allen unfolds the unique story of this area’s early building traditions and architectural innovations. The 250 buildings included in this work—from the plantation homes of the Washington family to the log houses of yeomen farmers—reveal the unique development of this region, as Allen categorizes structures and establishes patterns of construction, plan, and style.

Allen’s refreshing perspective illuminates the vibrant vernacular architecture of Jefferson County, connecting the housing of this area to the rich history of the Shenandoah Valley. Varying features of house siting, plan types, construction techniques, building materials, outbuildings, and exterior and interior detailing illustrate the blending of German, Scots-Irish, English, and African cultures into a distinct, regional style.
 
Adorned with over seven hundred stylish photographs by Walter Smalling and elegant drawings, floor plans, and maps by Andrew Lewis, Uncommon Vernacular explores and preserves this historic area’s rich architectural heritage.

  • Copyright year: 2011
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They'll Cut Off Your Project

A Mingo County Chronicle

By Huey Perry; Foreword by Jeff Biggers
West Virginia University Press, West Virginia University

In old England, if a king didn’t like you, he would cut off your head. Now, if they don’t like you, they’ll cut off your project!

As the Johnson Administration initiated its war on poverty in the 1960s, the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project was established in southern West Virginia. Huey Perry, a young, local history teacher was named the director of this program and soon he began to promote self-sufficiency among low-income and vulnerable populations. As the poor of Mingo County worked together to improve conditions, the local political infrastructure felt threatened by a shift in power. Bloody Mingo County, known for its violent labor movements, corrupt government, and the infamous Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, met Perry’s revolution with opposition and resistance. 

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 programs and conditions, establish cooperative grocery stores to bypass inflated prices, and expose electoral fraud. Along the way, Perry unfolds the local authority’s hostile backlash to such change and the extreme measures that led to an eventual investigation by the FBI. They’ll Cut Off Your Project chronicles the triumphs and failures of the war on poverty, illustrating why and how a local government that purports to work for the public’s welfare cuts off a project for social reform.

  • Copyright year: 2010
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A Nickel and a Prayer

West Virginia University Press

Virtually unknown outside of her adopted hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Jane Edna Harris Hunter was one of the most influential African American social activists of the early-to mid-twentieth century. In her autobiography A Nickel and a Prayer, Hunter presents an enlightening two-part narrative that recollects her formative years in post-Civil War South and her activist years in Cleveland. First published in 1940, Hunter’s autobiography recalls a childhood filled with the pleasures and pains of family life on the former plantation where her ancestors had toiled, adventures and achievements in schools for African American children, tests and trials during her brief marriage, and recognition and respect while completing nursing training and law school. When sharing the story of her life as an activist, Hunter describes the immense obstacles she overcame while developing an interracial coalition to support the Phillis Wheatley Association and nurturing its growth from a rented home that provided accommodation for twenty-two women to a nine-story building that featured one hundred and thirty-five rooms.   
This new and annotated edition of A Nickel and a Prayer includes the final chapter, “Fireside Musings,” that Hunter added to the second, limited printing of her autobiography and an introduction that lauds her as a multifaceted social activist who not only engaged in racial uplift work, but impacted African American cultural production, increased higher education opportunities for women, and invigorated African American philanthropy. This important text restores Jane Edna Harris Hunter to her rightful place among prominent African American race leaders of the twentieth century.

  • Copyright year: 2010
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Reading Old English

A Primer and First Reader, Revised Edition

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2010
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REVERSING FIELD

EXAMINING COMMERCIALIZATION, LABOR, GENDER, AND RACE IN 21ST CENTURY SPORTS LAW

West Virginia University Press
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An Appalachian Reawakening

West Virginia and the Perils of the New Machine Age, 1945-1972

West Virginia University Press

As the long boom of post-World War II economic expansion spread across the globe, dreams of white picket fences, democratic ideals, and endless opportunities flourished within the United States. Middle America experienced a period of affluent stability built upon a modern age of industrialization. Yet for the people of Appalachia, this new era brought economic, social, and environmental devastation, preventing many from realizing the American Dream. Some families suffered in silence; some joined a mass exodus from the mountains; while others, trapped by unemployment, poverty, illness, and injury became dependent upon welfare. As the one state most completely Appalachian, West Virginia symbolized the region's dilemma, even as it provided much of the labor and natural resources that fueled the nation's prosperity.

An Appalachian Reawakening: West Virginia and the Perils of the New Machine Age, 1945-1972 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 programs, which stimulated maximum feasible participation and lead to the ultimate rise of grass roots activities and organizations that improved life and labor in the region and undermined the notion of Appalachian fatalism.

  • Copyright year: 2010
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Still Life with Plums

Short Stories

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
  • Copyright year: 2010
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Roll Out the Carpet

101 Seasons of West Virginia University Basketball

By John Antonik; Foreword by Rod Thorn; Afterword by Bob Huggins
West Virginia University Press, West Virginia University
  • Copyright year: 2010
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A Strike Like No Other Strike

Law and Resistance During the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989-1990

West Virginia University Press

The miners' strike against Pittston Coal in 1989–1990, which spread throughout southwestern Virginia, southern West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, was one of the most important strikes in the history of American labor, and, as Richard Brisbin observes, "one of the longest and largest incidents of civil disorder and civil disobedience in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century." The company aggressively sought to break the strike, and workers and their families used a variety of tactics—lawful and unlawful—to resist Pittston's efforts as the situation quickly turned ugly.

In A Strike like No Other Strike: Law and Resistance during the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989–1990, Richard Brisbin offers a compelling study of the exercise of political power. In considering the legal significance of the strike, Brisbin asks the larger question of whether even extreme transgression or resistance can fracture the "imagined coherence of the law." He shows how each party in the strike invoked the law to justify its actions while attacking those of the other side as unlawful. In the end, both sides lost; although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the union, most of the strikers faced elimination of their jobs and an ongoing struggle for pensions and health benefits.

  • Copyright year: 2010
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PERSPECTIVES ON THE OLD SAXON HELIAND

INTRODUCTORY AND CRITICAL ESSAYS, WITH AN EDITION OF THE LEIPZIG FRAGMENT

West Virginia University Press
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CROSS AND CRUCIFORM IN THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD

STUDIES TO HONOR THE MEMORY OF TIMOTHY REUTER

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2010
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Helvetia

The History of a Swiss Village in the Mountains of West Virginia

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2010
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AN APPALACHIAN NEW DEAL

WEST VIRGINIA IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION

West Virginia University Press

In this paperback edition of An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression, Jerry Bruce Thomas examines the economic and social conditions of the state of West Virginia before, during, and after the Great Depression. Thomas’s exploration of personal papers by leading 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 program. This dissection of federal and state policies implemented under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program reveals the impact of poverty upon political, gender, race, and familial relations within the Mountain State—and the entire country. Through An Appalachian New Deal, Thomas documents the stories of ordinary citizens who survived a period of economic crisis and echoes a message from our nation’s past to a new generation enduring financial hardship and uncertainty.

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HEARTS OF GOLD

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2010
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OLD SOUTH, NEW SOUTH, OR DOWN SOUTH?

FLORIDA AND THE MODERN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2009
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THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET

SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
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EAST AFRICA

AN INTRODUCTORY HISTORY

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2009
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PARADOX HILL

"FROM APPALACHIA TO LUNAR SHORE, REVISED EDITION"

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
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CULTURE, CLASS, AND POLITICS IN MODERN APPALACHIA

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF RONALD L. LEWIS

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2009
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THE SAFETY OF DEEPER WATER

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
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MATEWAN BEFORE THE MASSACRE

"POLITICS, COAL AND THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT IN A WEST VIRGINIA MINING COMMUNITY"

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2008
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HISTORICAL ATLAS OF WEST VIRGINIA

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2008
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WITCHES, GHOSTS, AND SIGNS

FOLKLORE OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
  • Copyright year: 2008
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CROSS AND CULTURE IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

STUDIES IN HONOR OF GEORGE HARDIN BROWN

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2008
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LEADING THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

West Virginia University Press, West Virginia University
  • Copyright year: 2007
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KARTOON KINGS

THE GRAPHIC WORK OF SIMON GRENNEN AND CHRISTOPHER SPERANDIO

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2007
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DEFENDING THE HOMELAND

"HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RADICALISM, TERRORISM, AND STATE RESPONSES"

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2007
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BRINGING DOWN THE MOUNTAINS

THE IMPACT OF MOUTAINTOP REMOVAL SURFACE COAL MINING ON SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA COMMUNITIES

West Virginia University Press

Coal is West Virginia’s bread and butter. For more than a century, West Virginia has answered the energy call of the nation—and the world—by mining and exporting its coal. In 2004, West Virginia’s coal industry provided almost forty thousand jobs directly related to coal, and it contributed $3.5 billion to the state’s gross annual product. And in the same year, West Virginia led the nation in coal exports, shipping over 50 million tons of coal to twenty-three countries. Coal has made millionaires of some and paupers of many. For generations of honest, hard-working West Virginians, coal has put food on tables, built homes, and sent students to college. But coal has also maimed, debilitated, and killed.

Bringing Down the Mountains 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. Shirley Stewart Burns holds a BS in news-editorial journalism, a master’s degree in social work, and a PhD in history with an Appalachian focus, from West Virginia University. A native of Wyoming County in the southern West Virginia coalfields and the daughter of an underground coal miner, she has a passionate interest in the communities, environment, and histories of the southern West Virginia coalfields. She lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

  • Copyright year: 2007
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POTOMAC CANAL

GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE WATERWAY WEST

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2007
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THE WAY THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN HERE

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
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SEARCH FOR ORIGINS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY LONG POEM

"SUMERIAN, HOMERIC, ANGLO-SAXON"

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2007
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SURVIVING MAE WEST

West Virginia University Press, Vandalia Press
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POSTMODERN BEOWULF

A CRITICAL CASEBOOK

West Virginia University Press
  • Copyright year: 2006
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