Horace Kephart

Our Southern Highlanders Horace Kephart

"Marked apart from all other folks by dialect, by customs, by character, by self-conscious isolation". Time has lingered in Appalachia. One can go there nowadays, and still find cultural pockets that transport you back - timemachine-style - to pre-bigtech-, pre-worldwar- and pre-Nixon times. But before you go there, better read this in-depth account of Old-Time Appalachia, as it was in the 1900s.. No one can understand the attitude of our highlanders toward the rest of the earth until he realizes their amazing isolation from all that lies beyond the blue, hazy skyline of their mountains. Conceive a shipload of emigrants cast away on some unknown island, far from the regular track of vessels, and left there for five or six generations, unaided and untroubled by the growth of civilization. Among the descendants of such a company we would expect to find customs and ideas unaltered from the time of their forefathers. And that is just what we do find today among our castaways in the sea of mountains. Horace Kephart, famous for his survival- and outdoorbooks, lived in a log cabin for three years, and came to know the land and the people from inside and out. This book is guaranteed to remove any and all prejudices that the reader has on gap-toothed inbred rednecks, crackers, uncivilized hillbillies and violent and hopelessly dumb white trash. Instead it instill an all-inspiring awe for the very fine folks that have survived and lived for centuries in these neck-of-the-woods. Notoir Books is a publisher of classic books on topics of esoteric interests, eccentric lifes, overlooked history and distinctive memoirs. You can visit us for more at notoirbooks.com.