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The Hunters of Kentucky: A Narrative History of America’s First Far West, 1750-1797 covers a wide range of frontier existence, from daily life and survival to wars, exploits, and even flora and fauna. The pioneers and their lives are profiled in biographical sketches, giving a rich sampling of the personalities involved in the United States' westward expansion. Author Ted Franklin Belue's colorful, vivid prose brings these long-forgotten frontiersmen to life. HARDBACK VERSION By Ted Franklin Belue -
America is ready to remember and honor the men and women who courageously served the nation during World War II. To celebrate those brave souls and their families, and the spirit that carried them through our nation's darkest days, the Library of Congress has created a magnificent gift book. Themed around memories of Christmas during the war, I'll Be Home for Christmas: The Spirit of Christmas During World War II is a unique and handsomely packaged collection of poignant stories, correspondence, more than 100 photographs and illustrations, and diary excerpts from those who went off to war and those who kept the home fires burning. HARDBACK VERSION -
By Thomas J. Davis -
Morehead Memories recalls the struggle of a city and a county to advance from a raw, violent, feud filled region into a modern educational, commercial, cultural and medical center in Eastern Kentucky. The author uses interviews, documented research and personal memories to vividly tell the story of the people, places, institutions and events through which this marvelous transformation was accomplished. HARDBACK By Jack D. Ellis -
The Civil War affected the daily lives of almost everyone in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a slave holding state that chose not to secede from the United States. Here are the untold stories of lesser known combatants or the folks back home who suffered in so many ways from the ravages of war. Seventeen chapters range in topics from interviews with former slaves to an examination of Mary Todd Lincoln's family's military involvement in the war. SOFTBACK By Marshall Myers -
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Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley is the story of the Trans-Allegheny movement in the quarter-century from 1769-1794. It embraces the area of the present United States from western Pennsylvania to the Mississippi, and from the Great Lakes southward into Tennessee. The story of this westward movement begins with the emigration of the Zane family from the South Branch of the Potomac River, from their home near Moorefield, in present Hardy County, West Virginia, to the mouth of Wheeling Creek in the panhandle of that state, and concludes with Anthony Wayne’s victory over the confederated Indian tribes at Fallen Timbers. William Hintzen’s book brings back the days of Daniel Boone, the Zane family (founders of Wheeling), Simon Kenton, Lewis Wetzel (Death Wind, as the Indians knew him), the 1777 siege of Fort Henry, the Girty brothers, Sam McCo9lloch, Betty Zane’s dash for gunpowder, the remarkable Wetzel family, Sam Brady, George Rogers Clark and Mad Anthony Wayne’s final victory at Fallen Timbers. By William Hintzen -
In this family history, “Raft Tide and Railroad: How We Lived and Died — Collected Memories and Stories of an Appalachian Family and Its Seventh Son,” Appalachian author, poet, and editor Dr. Edwina Pendarvis, was guided by sage advice from a grandmother, Jet Johnson, known only to her through family stories and photographs. Not long before Johnson was murdered, she asked one of her sons to note the strength of a bundle of twigs – as opposed to an individual twig – and see it as a metaphor for family strength – a metaphor originated by an earlier Appalachian – the warrior Tecumseh. In “Raft Tide and Railroad,” the author has preserved her family’s history and recognized its strength through accounts that span seven generations of experiences in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia from the early 1800s to the present. SOFTBACK VERSION By Edwina Pendarvis -
SOFTBACK By Billy C. Clark -
In 1963, Harry M. Caudill published his now classic account of the reckless, deliberate despoliation of the Appalachian Plateau, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Thirteen years later, in The Watches of the Night, Caudill continued the heartbreaking story of an incredibly rich land inhabited by a grindingly poor people whose problems, despite state and local aid and an unprecedented boom in coal, had worsened: the land was being stripped more rapidly than ever; the people’s traditional relationship with the land was being uprooted, and their old customs eliminated by standardization Both a narrative history and a polemic against greed and waste, The Watches of the Night hammers at “the profligacy growing out of the persistent myth of superabundance.” The author ponders an even darker future if the cycle of boom and bust is not broken. He writes: “Americans have never understood or respected the finely textured, little-hill terrain of the Cumberland Plateau.” Neither the farmers nor the miners who followed the early pioneers saw it as a place cherish. Through decades that have lengthened to nearly two centuries the land has fought back, sometimes with savage floods and always with persistent efforts to reforest. “But now times runs out and our “inexhaustible” resources have turned finite….The Kentucky Cumberlands are many things, but most of all they are a warning.” By Harry M. Caudill -
No part of American history is more exciting than the 1770s, when Europeans first settled west of the Appalachian mountains in the land now known as Kentucky. Simon Kenton’s story is synonymous with the story of that era. His life of excitement, adventure, and danger on the frontier made him one of the leading heroes of that time and, eventually a Kentucky legend. By Thomas D. Clark -
The mountain is a lonely place. Welcome to Sourwood, a small Kentucky town inhabited by men and women unique and yet eerily familiar. Among its joyful and tragic citizens we meet the crafty, spirited Caleb and his curious younger brother; Pearl, a suspected witch, and her sheltered daughter, Thanie; superstitious Eli; and the doomed orphan Girty. In Sourwood, the mountain is both a keeper of secrets and an imposing, isolating presence, shaping the lives of all who live in its shadow. Strong in both the voice and sensibilities of Appalachia, the stories in Miss America Kissed Caleb are at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. In the title story, young Caleb turns over his hard-earned dime to the war effort when he receives a coaxing kiss from Miss America, who sweeps into Sourwood by train, "pretty as a night moth." Caleb and his brother share in the thrills and uncertainties of growing up, making an accidental visit to a brothel in "Fourth of July" and taming a "high society" pooch in "The Jimson Dog." These stories invoke a place and a time that have long passed―a way of living nearly extinct―yet the beauty of the language and the truth revealed in the characters' everyday lives continue to resonate with modern readers. By Billy C. Clark -
Goodbye Kate, Billy C. Clark’s sixth novel, is based in part on a mule he once owned. In the novel, Kate is found far back in the hills by a lonely country boy named Isaac Warfield. He lives close enough to Tatesburg, the nearest town, to walk to school there, but it’s a small town, and his home is isolated. Isaac has graduated from the little country school he has attended and the other members of his class will be moving on to another school, or to no school at all. He won’t have much contact with his friends anymore, and the nearest neighbor, a money-hungry man named Simm Johns, has no children and is “mean as a striped snake.” Isaac finds Kate when he goes back into the hills to pick some blackberries for his mother. The little mule is apparently as lonely as Isaac is, and she adopts him and follows him home – as far as the pine grove above the house, that is. By Billy C. Clark
