This is the third, and for a generation the most relied upon, of the big three overviews of the Appalachian Region. The first was The Spirit of the Mountains by Emma Bell Miles (1905), followed by Horace Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders which presented a more masculine approach. This book, actually written by John Campbell's wife after he died and published in 1921, is a more scholarly, less personal account. Here's what the publisher, The University Press of Kentucky, said about their reprint edition: "In 1908 John C. Campbell was commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct a survey of conditions in Appalachia and the aid work being done in these areas to create "the central repository of data concerning conditions in the mountains to which workers in the field might turn." Originally published in 1921, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland details Campbell's experiences and findings during his travels in the region, observing unique aspects of mountain communities such as their religion, family life, and forms of entertainment. Campbell's landmark work paved the way for folk schools, agricultural cooperatives, handicraft guilds, the frontier nursing service, better roads, and a sense of pride in mountain life―the very roots of Appalachian preservation."
Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, a 1969 reprint of a 1921 edition, 405 pages with a New Foreward by Rupert B. Vance and an Introduction by Henry D. Shapiro, Index, Bibliography, Appendices, and Tables. Trade paperback.