(For a firsthand account of life in Appalachian Kentucky, see Linda Scott DeRosier, Creeker.)
With rural poverty remaining a persistent problem in the US, sociologists Billings (Univ. of Kentucky; Planters and the Making of a “New South,” not reviewed) and Blee (Univ. of Pittsburgh; Women of the Klan, not reviewed) offer an ambitious history of an Appalachian county in order to understand “how places grow poor.”
“Culture-of-poverty” theory explains Appalachian economic backwardness as a result of cultural backwardness; “internal colonialism” views Appalachia as a region exploited for its natural resources, especially coal, by outside economic forces. While acknowledging the merits of both approaches and utilizing them, the authors also find both wanting in that Appalachia is presented as a place without a history. Yet how did a culture of poverty develop; what made it possible for Appalachia to become an internal colony? To answer these questions, Billings and Blee develop a remarkably detailed history of an impoverished county in Appalachian Kentucky from 1850 to 1910. Building on the research of James S. Brown and using everything from census records to court documents, the authors show how economics, culture, and politics interacted to create patterns of poverty that persist to this day. Early industrialization based on slave labor allowed for the creation in the county of a powerful elite whose influence was maintained through labyrinthine kinship ties and through the hegemonic control of local politics. Most of the rest of the white population engaged in subsistence farming, which became ever more precarious as population pressure came to bear on a limited amount of land. Here, too, kinship ties developed as means of survival and at times resistance to elite domination. Too often, however, elite dominance kept the poor in a dependent situation. Feuds, for instance, usually thought of as typically backward Appalachian behavior, were actually elite conflicts in which the poor were enlisted to fight. In brief, then, the complex and dynamic interaction of diverse forces prepared Appalachia for chronic poverty long before the present era. Skilled history from which interested readers and policy makers can learn much.
(For a firsthand account of life in Appalachian Kentucky, see Linda Scott DeRosier, Creeker.)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-521-65229-4
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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