"Connections Between Appalachia and the Wider World"

"I've talked a lot about J.D. Vance's kind of fetish for Appalachia’s shared Scots-Irish heritage. And for me this is central to the book because without it his argument doesn't work. It transforms his book from a memoir of a family to a memoir of a culture in crisis. So without that kind of cohesiveness, the book doesn't work—and he’s obviously very, very wrong about this. He's wrong about it according to so many metrics, whether it's archaeological evidence, whether it's historical documents and primary sources, whether it's contemporary reporting about people's ethnic heritage in Appalachia.
"And of course he's wrong that corporations didn’t help create the problems of Appalachia. I think anybody with even the most remedial understanding of Appalachian history should have issue with that. Obviously the coal industry has reshaped Appalachia in ways that we would still be contending with even if the coal industry packed up and left today."

Sarah Jones at the New Republic interviews Elizabeth Catte, author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia.

"But You Have Heard of His Protege"

"Daniel was celebrated for founding his own distillery, in 1866, at the mouth of a cave spring in Lynchburg, Tenn.—the master stroke that separated his whiskey from the stiff competition of the time. But before he found fame, Daniel was orphaned at age 15, according to the history 'Dead Distillers,' recently published by the Brooklyn-based bourbon distillers Colin Spoelman and David Haskell. Homeless, Daniel was taken in by the Call family, who owned a small distillery. The man Call put in charge of the whiskey production was none other than Uncle Nearis."

Ben Guarino in The Washington Post writes about Nearis Green, the enslaved distiller who taught Jack Daniel.

Children by the Millions

"Warren's deep research examines the arc of Chilton's life, uncovers periods of intense focus in famed Memphis studios, including disturbing scenes of a lover's blood on the mixing board and others of Chilton's own blood in bathtubs during suicide attempts. The writer, a former editor at Rolling Stone who has also penned books on Woodstock, Gene Autry and hillbilly and honky-tonk music among others, documents failed tours and promotional campaigns, revealing the curious fate and dashed expectations of an almost-was band and its irascible lead singer."


In the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts reviews Holly George Warren's A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton from Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man.

Make the World Go Away

Peter Cooper in The Tennessean writes an obit for countrypolitan singer Eddy Arnold.

Teaching Both Sides

"The anniversary of the 'Monkey Trial' provides an occasion to remember that it didn't really settle what we assume it settled. Popular memory of the trial, reinforced by the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, made it seem that evolution was triumphant and fundamentalism vanquished, but in fact the result was much more ambiguous. Anti-Darwinism didn't die in Dayton, Tenn., in July 1925—it just retreated temporarily from the national scene, to which it has now returned."

Via Ghost in the Machine, historian David Greenberg in Slate reevaluates the inheritance of the Scopes Trial.