J.D. Vance’s Elegy pigeon holes poor whites into neat categories of dysfunction and disaffection. It’s a treatment that ought to sound familiar to African Americans. Let’s hope the result is different.   EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve already run one review of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Here’s another view from […]

In 2012 the coal industry waged war against the Obama administration over energy and environmental policy. Down by the Green River where Paradise lay, the message came through loud and clear. EDITOR’S NOTE: Miners cuss. Please exercise your individual discretion if you prefer not to be exposed to a small […]

Hundreds of kids scurrying to buses are oblivious to a sign above them declaring Bourbon County High School “100 percent Tobacco Free.” But upstairs in the library, sophomore and anti-smoking advocate Jacob Steward unfurls a six-foot scroll with earth-toned papers trapped between clear sheets of laminate. He begins reading the […]

Gone from most kitchen pantries, sorghum keeps connections strong in some rural communities. Just a few miles down a narrow, winding road from Buckhannon, the seat of Upshur County, West Virginia, a carved wooden sign welcomes visitors to Tallmansville. At first glance, there’s not much to the rural village of […]