Summary

From Wounded Knee to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and from the Upper Big Branch mine disaster to the Trail of Tears, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered presents photographs of significant sites from US history, posing unsettling questions about the contested memory of traumatic episodes from the nation’s past. Focusing especially on landscapes related to African American, Native American, and labor history, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered reveals new vistas of officially commemorated sites, sites that are neglected or obscured, and sites that serve as a gathering place for active rituals of organized memory.

These powerful photographs by award-winning photojournalist Andrew Lichtenstein are interspersed with short essays by some of the leading historians of the United States. The book is introduced with substantive meditations on meaning and landscape by Alex Lichtenstein, editor of the American Historical Review, and Edward T. Linenthal, former editor of the Journal of American History. Individually, these images convey American history in new and sometimes startling ways. Taken as a whole, the volume amounts to a starkly visual reckoning with the challenges of commemorating a violent and conflictual history of subjugation and resistance that we forget at our peril.

Visit this book's website to preview photographs in the book, as well as to learn more about events, publicity, and contributors.

Read Stephen Kantrowitz's essay:

Contents

Contributors:
Kevin Boyle
Douglas Egerton
Scot French
Michael Honey
Stephen Kantrowitz
Ari Kelman
Gary Okihiro
Julie Reed
Christina Snyder
Clarence Taylor

Author

Alex Lichtenstein, current editor of the American Historical Review, is a professor of history at Indiana University. The author of many articles on labor, prison, and civil rights history, his previous work on photography is Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid.

Andrew Lichtenstein is a photographer, journalist, and educator from Brooklyn, New York. His first book Never Coming Home was published in 2007.

Reviews

"Andrew Lichtenstein sees history all around, even when it’s not evident at first glance. A pastoral, sun-drenched Mississippi cotton field turns out to be where Emmett Till was murdered. A tranquil suburban subdivision was the site of untold suffering in 1838, when Cherokee Indians had to endure a brutal winter as the government forced them westward on the Trail of Tears. He admits that making pictures of seemingly-ordinary places where tragedy, conflict or rebellion took place isn’t easy. But as has been seen in recent weeks, there has been a growing movement to not just remove memorials honoring Confederate generals but to make sure the counter-narrative is recognized and heard. That sentiment informs his coming book, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory, which will be published in October by the West Virginia University Press."
New York Times Lens Blog

"A remarkable and essential work of visual documentary history of interest to the scholarly and general reader alike."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A thought-provoking addition to the literature on sites of public memory, complementing titles such as Kenneth Foote’s Shadowed Ground."
Library Journal

"Brilliant and memorable."
Los Angeles Review of Books

"Marked, Unmarked, Remembered is a call to both see and recall."
Shelf Awareness

"There's an eerie silence that permeates throughout Andrew Lichtenstein's photographs taken at the sites of racial tragedies in the US. These are places where blood was spilled and unspeakable horrors inflicted, the consequences of which we are still grappling with today. Turn on the TV or listen in at any dinner table in America and you'll undoubtedly hear a slew of opinions on US race relations — but here, in these dark and melancholic pictures, the spaces are allowed to speak for themselves."
Gabriel H. Sanchez, photo essay editor, BuzzFeed News

“Marked, Unmarked, Remembered is startling and extraordinary. From its images of the past as officials wish us to remember it, to those of a past that is largely unknown to us because those with power have deemed it destabilizing, to the capturing of our past as it has been reclaimed by those invested in rescuing its lessons for the present, this book is a true gift. It both unsettles our sense of who we thought we were, and it makes us see the imperative of forging a more just future for all.”
Heather Ann Thompson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

“When Jacob awoke from his dream of a heavenly ladder in the Book of Genesis, he piled stones to mark the spot. We do much the same today, recognizing certain landscapes as holy or haunted, erecting markers and memorials—piling stones—to conjure or contain their uncanny power. In this quietly moving book, Andrew and Alex Lichtenstein examine some of America’s haunted landscapes, offering a meditation on history, catastrophe, and the wages of memory and forgetting.”
James T. Campbell, author of Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005

“Photographer Andrew Lichtenstein has said that ‘acknowledgment is the first step towards healing.’ In his powerful work, which explores places of historic—and often forgotten—conflict and trauma, he does more than acknowledge. He testifies. He testifies to the past, to the present, to the pains that have broken us—and most of all, to the humanity that defines us. He is setting us on a badly needed path of healing.”
Sara Terry, Founder and Director, The Aftermath Project

Summary

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.

The Eastham-Thompson feud pitted a former Confederate against a member of the new business elite who was, as a northern Republican, his cultural and political opposite. For Lewis, their clash was one flashpoint in a larger phenomenon central to US history in the second half of the nineteenth century: the often violent imposition of new commercial and legal regimes over holdout areas stretching from Appalachia to the trans-Missouri West. Taking a ground-level view of these so-called “wars of incorporation,” Lewis’s powerful microhistory shows just how strongly local communities guarded traditional relationships to natural resources. Modernizers sought to convict Eastham of murder, but juries drawn from the traditionalist population refused to comply. Although the resisters won the courtroom battle, the modernizers eventually won the war for control of the state’s timber frontier.

Contents

Acknowledgements                                                                                         

Introduction                                                                                                   

1. The Incorporation of West Virginia                                                                        

2. Modernizing the Law                                                                                             

3. Robert W. Eastham, the Early Years                                                                      

4. Eastham in West Virginia                                                                            

5. Who Were the Thompsons?                                                                                   

6. Setting the Stage for Trouble                                                                                  

7. The Struggle for Control                                                                             

8. The Shoot-Out and “Lawyers by the Dozen”                                                       

9. Jury Selection and Appeal to the High Court                                                        

10. On Trial for Murder                                                                                            

11. Epilogue: The Aftermath                                                                          

Bibliography                                                               

Index                                                                                       

Author

Ronald L. Lewis is Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair and Professor of History Emeritus at West Virginia University, where he taught for many years. He is the author of several books, including Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II (published by WVU Press) and Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920. He lives in Morgantown, WV.

Reviews

“Fascinating and informative. Lewis has crafted a thoroughly researched, well-written, and lively narrative account that uses one violent event—and all it set into motion—to show how old Civil War conflicts were rekindled, how increasingly marginalized farmer-loggers attempted to challenge corporate power, and especially how control of courts and local governance were central instruments in this epic struggle.”
Dwight Billings, University of Kentucky

“A welcome addition to the study of industrial Appalachia. Through the lives of Eastham and Thompson, Ronald L. Lewis provides a strong sense of how the ‘incorporation of America’ unfolded at the local level.”
Bruce E. Stewart, Appalachian State University

"A lively, personal, and engaging read."
Ohio Valley History

Summary

Few know the name Anna Jarvis, yet on the second Sunday in May, we mail the card, buy the flowers, place the phone call, or make the brunch reservation to honor our mothers, all because of her. 

Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 and then spent decades promoting the holiday and defending it from commercialization. She designed her Mother’s Day celebration around a sentimental view of motherhood and domesticity, envisioning a day venerating the daily services and sacrifices of mothers within the home.

After Mother’s Day became a national holiday in 1914, many organizations sought to align the holiday’s meaning with changing perceptions of modern motherhood in the twentieth century. Instead of restricting a mother’s service and influence solely to the domestic sphere, they emphasized the power of mothers both within their homes and throughout their communities. 

Jarvis refused to accept this changing interpretation, claiming both intellectual and legal ownership of Mother’s Day. Her obsession with protecting the purity of her vision sustained a war of verbal and legal assaults against rival holiday promoters, patriotic women’s organizations, charitable foundations, public health reformers, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. The struggle for control of Mother’s Day ultimately threatened her livelihood, physical health, and emotional stability. 

Memorializing Motherhood explores the complicated history of Anna Jarvis’s movement to establish and control Mother’s Day, as well as the powerful conceptualization of this day as both a holiday and a cultural representation of motherhood.

Contents

• Introduction: The Cultural Duality of Mother’s Day
• Chapter 1: The Foremothers and Forefather of Mother’s Day
• Chapter 2: Anna Jarvis and the Mother’s Day Movement
• Chapter 3: “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”: The Rivalry of Father’s Day and
• Parents’ Day
• Chapter 4: The American War Mothers and a Memoir of Mothers’ Day
• Chapter 5: A New Mother’s Day: The Holiday Campaigns of the American Mothers
• Committee and the Maternity Center Association.
• Epilogue: Anna Jarvis’s Final Years and the Burden of the Mother’s Day Movement
• Appendix
• Selected Bibliography
• Notes
• About the Author
• Index

Author

Katharine Lane Antolini is assistant professor of History and Gender Studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and serves on the Board of Trustees of the International Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia.

Reviews

Summary

The Rebel in the Red Jeep follows the personal and professional experiences of Ken Hechler, the West Virginia politician and activist who died in 2016 at the age of 102.

This biography recounts a century of accomplishments, from Hechler’s introduction of innovative teaching methods at major universities, to his work as a speechwriter and researcher for President Harry Truman, and finally to his time representing West Virginia in the United States House of Representatives and as the secretary of state.

In West Virginia, where he resisted mainstream political ideology, Hechler was the principal architect behind the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 and constantly battled big coal, strip mining, and fellow politicians alike. He and his signature red jeep remain a fixture in West Virginia. Since 2004, Hechler has campaigned against mountaintop removal mining. He was arrested for trespassing during a protest in 2009 at the age of 94. 

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

1. Behind the Wrought Iron Gates

2. Big Man on Campus

3. Over There!

4. Princeton’s Professor of Politics

5. The Truman White House

6. The Road to Congress Winds Through West Virginia

7. Rouge Campaigner

8. Your Servant in Congress

9. Congressional Campaigning, Hechler Style

10. Space . . . Where Hechler Didn’t Expect To Go

11. Win Some; Lose Some

12. Marching to Selma

13. Fighting For Miners’ Lives

14. Hechler vs. Big Coal—Round Two

15. Saving the New River

16. Heckling Congress

17. The Interregnum

18. The People’s Office—The First Term

19. The People’s Office—The Rest of the Story

20. Walking With Granny D

21. From Rebel to Hell-raiser

22. Into the Sunset

23. Twilight

Notes

Index

Author

Carter Taylor Seaton is the author of Hippie Homesteaders: Arts, Crafts, Music, and Living on the Land in West Virginia, two novels, and numerous magazine articles. A ceramic sculptor, she previously directed a rural craft cooperative and was a marketing professional for thirty years. She is the recipient of the 2014 West Virginia Library Association’s Literary Merit Award, 2015 Marshall University Distinguished Alumni Award, and the 2016 Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Reviews

“A superb biography of a West Virginia icon. Carter Seaton has done a wonderful job capturing the essence of Ken Hechler.”
Jean Edward Smith, author of Bush, Eisenhower in War and Peace, and FDR

“Fascinating new insights into the personal and political aspects of the long career of one of the Mountain State’s most intriguing and maverick political leaders.”
Paul Nyden, retired Charleston Gazette labor reporter

Summary

Set within a backdrop of small towns and hard-working communities in middle America, The Whole World at Once is a collection of intense stories about the experience of loss. Pringle weaves together spellbinding tales amidst shadowed and foreboding physical and emotional landscapes where each of the characters is in motion against her surroundings, and each is as likely as the next to be traveling with a ghost. A soldier returns home from multiple tours only to begin planting landmines in the field behind his house; kids chase a ghost story up country roads only to become one themselves; one girl copes with the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance during the agricultural fair, while another girl searches for understanding after seeing the picture of a small boy washed onto a beach.

In language that is at once both stark and rich, we enter the lives of the characters deliberately, in slow scenes—time enough for a bird to sing as a man and a girl, strangers, fall to their knees—that are inevitable yet laced with the unpredictable. Dark, strange beauties, all of the stories in The Whole World at Once follow the lives of people grappling with what it means to live in a world with death.

Contents

Acknowledgments

How the Sun Burns among Hills of Rock and Pebble

The Boy Who Walks

The Boy in the Red Shirt

When the Frost Comes

This Bomb My Heart

The Fish

The Lightning Tree

The Missing Time

The Wandering House 

Reading and Discussion Questions

About the Author

Author

Erin Pringle is the author of The Floating Order. Her work has been selected as a Best American Notable Non-Required Reading, shortlisted for the Charles Pick Fellowship, and a finalist for contests such as the Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest and the Kore Press Short Fiction Award. She was awarded a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship, which she used to write and revise many of these stories. Learn more at erinpringle.com.

Reviews

"Ms. Pringle casts a somber gaze at the formative traumas that beset blue-collar America. In "The Wandering House," a young woman is disfigured in a meth-lab explosion. The subtly disquieting tale "The Boy Who Walks" depicts a child's personality change after he nearly freezes to death while wandering through the snow. "After that day, the boy's different. Like his own ghost thinks he died, though he didn't, but now tags him everywhere he goes." You can feel that Ms. Pringle has labored over her sentences, giving them the strength of tempered steel. She has a knack for the cinematic image as well."
Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“Erin Pringle’s stories leave you no choice. They sing so gorgeously, break your heart so perfectly, that you’re forced to revise your understanding of loss, luck, and love.”
Tom Noyes, author of Come by Here: A Novella and Stories

“Readers willing to immerse themselves in sorrow, and sometimes in narratives that twist and shimmer before taking definite shape, will find reflected in these stories the unsteady path of coming back to life—or not—after loss.”
Kirkus Reviews

“In these restless and relentless fictions, the unstoppable storyteller Erin Pringle is at it again. “It” being the most American of dramas—the endless conflict between mobility and stability. In these patently patient, transparently transparent, overly understated stories, the characters constantly fidget and fret in low frequency worries all the while their vital signs are sighing and simmering. These are pristine and persistent visions of hobble-hearted people going nowhere fast.  Her writing, word after word, will stop you in your tracks, will ease you over the edgiest of edges. Don’t blink!”
Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter

“There’s no writer working today who excites me more than Erin Pringle. Her stories stretch like planks off a cliff, past solid ground, offering breath-stealing views of grief, love, and mystery. I love this collection.”
Owen Egerton, author of The Book of Harold and writer and director of the thriller Follow

“A strikingly original collection. This book is poetic, yet has a deep sense of storytelling.”
Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree and editor of Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia

Summary

The pepperoni roll, a soft bread roll with pepperoni baked in the middle, originated in the coal mining areas of north central West Virginia when Italian immigrants invented a food that could be eaten easily underground. This spicy snack soon found its way out of the mines and into bakeries, bread companies, restaurants, and event venues around the state, often with additional ingredients like cheese, red sauce, or peppers added to this humble food staple. As the pepperoni roll’s reputation moves beyond the borders of West Virginia, this food continues to embody the culinary culture of its home state. It is now found at the center of bake offs, eating contests, festivals, as a gourmet item on local menus, and even on a bill in the state’s legislature. The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll is a comprehensive history of the unofficial state food of West Virginia. With over 100 photographs and countless recipes and recollections, it tells the story of the immigrants, business owners, laborers, and citizens who have developed and devoured this simple yet practical food since its invention.  Learn about upcoming events with Candace Nelson.

Summary

From Ann Margret to Bob Dylan and George Jones to Simon & Garfunkel, Nashville harmonica virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has contributed to some of the most successful recordings of country, pop, and rock music of the last six decades. As the leader of the Hee Haw “Million-Dollar Band,” McCoy spent more than two decades appearing on the television screens of country music fans around the United States. And, as a solo artist, he has entertained audiences across North America, Europe, and Japan and has earned numerous honors as a result.

Fifty Cents and a Box Top: The Creative Life of Nashville Session Musician Charlie McCoy offers rare firsthand insights into life in the recording studio, on the road, and on the small screen as Nashville became a leading center of popular music production in the 1960s and as a young McCoy, a West Virginia native, established himself as one of the most sought-after session musicians in the country. 

Over the course of his nearly six-decade career as a session musician, harmonica virtuoso, and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has appeared on thousands of country, pop, and rock recordings. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame, and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, McCoy also led the famous “Million-Dollar Band” on the syndicated country music program Hee Haw for more than two decades.

Contents

Foreword: Travis D. Stimeling

Acknowledgements

1. West Virginia Days

2. Rock and Roll Charlie

3. The Road to Nashville

4. College and the Return to Nashville

5. Music City Opportunities

6. Life in the Studio

7. The Artists

8. The Recording Artist

9. Hee Haw

10. An Artist Overseas

11. The Harmonica and Me

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Nashville Number System

Appendix B: Artist Discography

Notes

Index

Photographs

Author

Over the course of his nearly six-decade career as a session musician, harmonica virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has appeared on thousands of country, pop, and rock recordings. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame, and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, McCoy also led the famous “Million-Dollar Band” on the syndicated country music program Hee Haw for more than two decades.

Travis D. Stimeling is associate professor of musicology at West Virginia University, where he also directs the WVU Bluegrass and Old-Time Bands. His previous books include Cosmic Cowboys, New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin’s Progressive Country Music Scene, The Country Music Reader, and Songwriting in Contemporary West Virginia: Profiles and Reflections, published by WVU Press.

Reviews

"We've been waiting for McCoy to tell us his story and can be grateful that he has now done so in such compelling and entertaining fashion."
No Depression

“One of the first serious, substantive books by a major participant in the Nashville recording scene. McCoy’s recollections and insights offer a new and fascinating perspective on the development and expansion of the country music industry.”
Rich Kienzle, author of The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones

"Fifty Cents and a Box Top–what a great title–is well worth your time."
Joe Specht, Librarian Emeritus, McMurry University and co-editor of The Roots of Texas Music

Summary

The sixty-three fiction writers and poets within this anthology delve deep into the many senses of place that modern West Virginia, the core of Appalachia, inspires.

Throughout this collection, we see profound wonder, questioning, and conflicts involving family, sexual identity, class, discrimination, environmental beauty and peril, and all the sorts of rebellion, error, contemplation, and contentment that an intrepid soul can devise. These stories and poems, all published within the last fifteen years, are grounded in what it means to live in and identify with a complex place.

With a mix of established writers like Jayne Anne Phillips, Norman Jordan, Ann Pancake, Maggie Anderson, and Denise Giardina and fresh voices like Matthew Neill Null, Ida Stewart, Rajia Hassib, and Scott McClanahan, this collection breaks open new visions of all-American landscapes of the heart. By turns rowdy and contemplative, hilarious and bleak, and lyrical and gritty, it is a collage of extraordinary literary visions.

Contents

Gail Galloway Adams
Maggie Anderson
Pinckney Benedict
Laura Treacy Bentley
Michael Blumenthal
Ace Boggess
Mark Brazaitis
Joy Castro
Jonathan Corcoran
Ed Davis
Mark DeFoe
Cheryl Denise
Andrea Fekete
Denise Giardina
Maggie Glover
Crystal Good
James Harms
Marc Harshman
Rajia Hassib
John Hoppenthaler
Ron Houchin
Norman Jordan
Laura Long
Marie Manilla
Jeff Mann
Mesha Maren
Lee Maynard
Scott McClanahan
John McKernan
Llewellyn McKernan
Irene McKinney
Devon McNamara
Kelly McQuain
Rahul Mehta
Sheryl Monks
Mary B. Moore
Renée K. Nicholson
Val Nieman
Matthew Neill Null
Ann Pancake
Jayne Anne Phillips
Sara Pritchard
Mary Ann Samyn
Elizabeth Savage
Steve Scafidi
Angela Shaw
Kent Shaw
Anita Skeen
Aaron Smith
Ida Stewart
Kevin Stewart
A. E. Stringer
Natalie Sypolt
Glenn Taylor
Vince Trimboli
Jessie van Eerden
Doug Van Gundy
John Van Kirk
Erin Veith
Ryan Walsh
Randi Ward
Meredith Sue Willis
William Woolfitt

Editors

Laura Long is the author of the novel Out of Peel Tree and two poetry collections. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia.

Doug Van Gundy’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Oxford American, Ecotone, Appalachian Heritage, Poetry Salzburg Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the poetry collection A Life Above Water, and he teaches writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Reviews

"Editors Long and Van Gundy bring together fiction and poetry to show a region as diverse as the people who make it up. . . .A collage of a region that is greater than the sum of its parts."
Kirkus Reviews

"Beautiful and important."
Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt, The Coal Tattoo, and Eli the Good

“This book is a literary treasure for West Virginia and the rest of the Appalachian region. Interwoven with prose and poetry, it is a rumination on what it means to be of a mountain place in this day and time. In vivid, fresh language West Virginians explore place, identity, family, and so much more. A rich and important addition to mountain letters, I think this book will be regarded for a long time.”
Crystal Wilkinson, author of The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries

“Never sentimental or clichéd, this essential collection captures the complexity and richness of West Virginia today. Revealing a deep, sometimes uneasy connection to home, these stories and poems carry us into the coalfields and hollers, cities, and small towns across West Virginia, and take surprising turns along the way to illuminate its beauty, darkness, violence, and grace.”
Carter Sickels, author of The Evening Hour

"Representing the rich diversity of West Virginians, these writers offer historical, contemporary, and timeless reflections of life and death in the great mountain state through poignant, at times haunting, poetry and prose."
Theresa L. Burriss, Radford University 

Summary

Ecologists, like other scientists, have for decades debated their role in society. While some have argued that ecologists should participate in environmental politics, others have focused their attention strictly on scientific issues. In Ecologists and Environmental Politics, now updated with a new preface by the author, Stephen Bocking explores this debate by recounting the history of ecology in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada since the 1940s.

Bocking tells this history through four case studies: the origins and early research of the Nature Conservancy in Great Britain; the development of ecology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; the work of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study in New Hampshire; and research in fisheries ecology at the University of Toronto. By comparing these case studies, Bocking demonstrates how the places of contemporary science—laboratories, landscapes, and funding agencies—and science’s purposes, as expressed through the political roles of expertise and specific managerial and regulatory responsibilities, have shaped contemporary ecology and its application to pressing environmental problems.

Contents

Coming Soon.

Author

Stephen Bocking is a professor of environmental history and policy in the Trent School of the Environment at Trent University. His other books include Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas, and Action, Nature's Experts: Science, Politics, and the Environment, and Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History.

Reviews

“An important study of the period when ecology was being called upon to solve problems of environmental deterioration, and of the institutional context of scientific research in general.”
Environmental History