Night Comes to the Cumberlands

By Harry M. Caudill,

Book cover of Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area

Book description

At the start of the 1960s the USA was unquestionably the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world.

Yet despite its prosperity and influence there were areas of the country which seemed to have been forgotten.

In 1962 Harry Caudill, a lawyer and legislator, decided to shine a light…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Night Comes to the Cumberlands as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Few books have changed the course of history like Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Exposing political corruption, environmental destruction, and endemic poverty in Appalachia, Night Comes put poverty squarely on the national agenda and inspired LBJ’s War on Poverty. Although not rigorously factual — Caudill never let the facts get in the way of a good story — Night Comes is a priceless document of its time and place, and required reading for anyone who wants to understand Appalachian culture and history in the middle of the 20th century.

Having grown up in an industrial town in East Tennessee, I read this 1962 classic by a Kentucky lawyer and legislator and first realized that my homeland was regarded as disadvantaged by the rest of the country. Caudill summarized the history of our Appalachian region, depicting the poverty and poor health of its inhabitants and the degradation of its natural environment. He described how extractive industries had removed the region’s coal and timber and funneled the profits into the pockets of distant shareholders. He also discussed the feuds at the end of the nineteenth century, as subsistence farmers fought to…

From Lisa's list on the Hatfield–McCoy feud.

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