| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia. By Chad Montrie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xv + 245 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Paper $18.95.

Starting with the local color writers movement of the late nineteenth century and continuing through to the latest attempt by CBS to launch a Beverly Hillbillies reality show, inhabitants of Appalachia have been lampooned in the national news media and other outlets as a backward, fatalistic, and quiescent people. According to Stephen L. Fisher, "During the 1960s and 1970s, some in Appalachia sought to counter this image, either by painting highly romanticized pictures of traditional Appalachian culture and then lamenting its destruction by outside forces or by describing the many ways in which the region had been economically exploited by the rest of the country. But far too often these efforts unwittingly reinforced the notion of Appalachians as victims, as non-actors in determining their fate." As Chad Montrie shows us, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Building on the work of Fisher and others, Montrie reminds us that citizens all across the region waged a relentless decades-long battle to protect their farms and communities from the ravages of strip mining.

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