This is the first book to celebrate the life and writing of one of the most charismatic Southern leaders of the middle twentieth century, Don West (1906-1992). West was a poet, a pioneer advocate for civil rights, a preacher, a historian, a labor organizer, a folk-music revivalist, an essayist, and an organic farmer. He is perhaps best known as an educator, primarily as cofounder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and founder of the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia. In his old age, West served as an elder statesman for his causes. No Lonesome Road allows Don West to speak for himself. It provides the most comprehensive collection of his poetry ever published, spanning five decades of his literary career. It also includes the first comprehensive and annotated collection of West's nonfiction essays, articles, letters, speeches, and stories, covering his role at the forefront of Southern and Appalachian history, and as a pioneer researcher and writer on the South's little-known legacy of radical activism. Drawing from both primary and secondary sources, including previously unknown documents, correspondence, interviews, FBI files, and newspaper clippings, the introduction by Jeff Biggers stands as the most thorough, insightful biographical sketch of Don West yet published in any form. The afterword by George Brosi is a stirring personal tribute to the contributions of West and also serves as a thoughtful reflection on the interactions between the radicals of the 1930s and the 1960s. The best possible introduction to his extraordinary life and work, this annotated selection of Don West's writings will be inspirational reading for anyone interested in Southern history, poetry, religion, or activism.

No Lonesome Road: SELECTED PROSE AND POEMS

Literature & Fiction

Biggers, Jeff

West, Don

Brosi, George

Poetry

University of Illinois Press

This is the first book to celebrate the life and writing of one of the most charismatic Southern leaders of the middle twentieth century, Don West (1906-1992). West was a poet, a pioneer advocate for civil rights, a preacher, a historian, a labor organizer, a folk-music revivalist, an essayist, and an organic farmer. He is perhaps best known as an educator, primarily as cofounder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and founder of the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia. In his old age, West served as an elder statesman for his causes. No Lonesome Road allows Don West to speak for himself. It provides the most comprehensive collection of his poetry ever published, spanning five decades of his literary career. It also includes the first comprehensive and annotated collection of West's nonfiction essays, articles, letters, speeches, and stories, covering his role at the forefront of Southern and Appalachian history, and as a pioneer researcher and writer on the South's little-known legacy of radical activism. Drawing from both primary and secondary sources, including previously unknown documents, correspondence, interviews, FBI files, and newspaper clippings, the introduction by Jeff Biggers stands as the most thorough, insightful biographical sketch of Don West yet published in any form. The afterword by George Brosi is a stirring personal tribute to the contributions of West and also serves as a thoughtful reflection on the interactions between the radicals of the 1930s and the 1960s. The best possible introduction to his extraordinary life and work, this annotated selection of Don West's writings will be inspirational reading for anyone interested in Southern history, poetry, religion, or activism.

United States

The Sierra Madre--no other mountain range in the world possesses such a ring of intrigue. In the Sierra Madre is a groundbreaking and extraordinary memoir that chronicles the astonishing history of one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the Raramuri/Tarahumara, award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers offers a rare look into the ways of the most resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of Mexican mountaineers, and the fascinating parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters including Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo, and Pancho Villa, Biggers uncovers the remarkable treasures of the Sierra Madre.

In the Sierra Madre

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Set in the ruins of his family’s strip-mined homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, award-winning journalist and historian Jeff Biggers delivers a deeply personal portrait of the overlooked human and environmental costs of our nation’s dirty energy policy. Beginning with the policies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, chronicling the removal of Native Americans and the hidden story of legally sanctioned black slavery in the land of Lincoln, Reckoning at Eagle Creek vividly describes the mining wars for union recognition and workplace safety, and the devastating consequences of industrial strip-mining. At the heart of our national debate over climate change and the crucial transition toward clean energy, Biggers exposes the fallacy of “clean coal” and shatters the marketing myth that southern Illinois represents the “Saudi Arabia of coal.” Reckoning at Eagle Creek is ultimately an exposé of “historicide,” one that traces coal’s harrowing legacy through the great American family saga of sacrifice and resiliency and the extraordinary process of recovering our nation’s memory.

Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (Shawnee Books)

History

Americas

Southern Illinois University Press

Accelerated Reader is a program based on the fact that students become more motivated to read if they are tested on the content of the books they have read and are rewarded for correct answers. Students read each book, individually take the test on the computer, and receive gratification when they score well. Schools using the Accelerated Reader program have seen a significant increase in reading among their students.Teens who need help with life skills may have parents who are all too frequently not around to provide basic instruction. In an ever riskier world, strong values and safety tips are a must. These high/low titles will help.

Chemical Dependency and the Dysfunctional Family (Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Addiction & Recovery

Rosen Publishing Group

Transgenerational Addiction

Discusses drug abuse and alcoholism, how they may be passed from one generation to the next, and the problems they can cause in families.

Transgenerational Addiction (Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

Teen & Young Adult

Social Issues

Rosen Pub. Group

Discusses the causes and dangers of chemical dependency, its effects on the family, and ways to get help in dealing with this problem.

Chemical Dependency and the Dysfunctional Family (The Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

Rosen Young Adult

"A role model for those of us living in the age of Trump"--Dorothy Allison
Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Anne Royall was an American original, a stranger to fear who defied 19th century skeptics as a prolific literary force, satirist and social critic.
Drawing from Royall's largely overlooked literary works, Jeff Biggers's Trials of a Scold is a groundbreaking and passionate biography of Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, who was convicted as a "common scold" in 1829 in one of the most bizarre trials in the nation's history.
Publishing her first book in 1826 at the age of 57, Royall reinvented herself as a “women politico” a generation before the Women's Suffrage Movement. She was a pioneering travel writer and satirist who broke ground on the wagon trails a generation before Mark Twain, and an investigative journalist who took on bankers and prison conditions a half century before muckrakers Ida Tarbell and Nellie Bly. She was the author of 10 original books, and publisher of a newspaper in Washington, DC for 25 years until the age of 85.
One of the most famous, sharp-witted and controversial women of her times, Royall was raised in the backwoods of the South but educated herself in one of the great libraries in the region. She openly cohabitated with her husband prior to their wedding, but was then left widowed and destitute after her husband’s family declared their marriage invalid. Turning to writing, Royall acquired fame and then enemies for her scathing and hilarious denouncements of corruption, incompetence and the blurry lines between church and state.

The Trials of a Scold: The Incredible True Story of Writer Anne Royall

Community & Culture

Thomas Dunne Books

Discusses drug abuse and alcoholism, how they may be passed from one generation to the next, and the problems they can cause in families.

Hazelden

Cultural historian Jeff Biggers takes us to the dark amphitheatre ruins of his family's nearly 200-year-old hillside homestead that has been strip-mined on the edge of the first federally recognized Wilderness Site in southern Illinois. In doing so, he not only comes to grips with his own denied backwoods heritage, but also chronicles a dark and missing chapter in the American experience: the historical nightmare of coal outside of Appalachia, serving as an exposé of a secret legacy of shame and resiliency.

Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland

Nation Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Biggers, Jeff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Biggers, Jeff

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Biggers, Jeff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

No Lonesome Road: SELECTED PROSE AND POEMS

No Lonesome Road: SELECTED PROSE AND POEMS

In the Sierra Madre

Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (Shawnee Books)

Chemical Dependency and the Dysfunctional Family (Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

Transgenerational Addiction (Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

Chemical Dependency and the Dysfunctional Family (The Drug Abuse Prevention Library)

The Trials of a Scold: The Incredible True Story of Writer Anne Royall

Transgenerational Addiction

Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland