| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Raccoon John Smith: Frontier Kentucky's Most Famous Preacher. By John Sparks. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. xxvi, 462 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-2370-7.)

This sprawling biography of Kentucky Baptist–turned–Disciples of Christ preacher Elder John Smith (1784–1868) opens windows not only into the remarkable life of its subject but also into the intricate story of Appalachian evangelical Christianity before and since—in minute and even personal detail. The author, identified on the title page and dust jacket by his office as an elder (ordained minister) in the United Baptist Church, makes it clear on every page that, while this is the first scholarly study of Smith ever published, it is the work of a historian deeply embedded in the tradition about which he writes. Elder John Sparks himself is a remarkable individual. Lacking graduate degrees, making his living as a hospital medical technician while following his vocation as a Baptist preacher, he has already established himself as something much more than an amateur local or denominational historian. His prize-winning earlier book on Shubal Stearns, The Roots of Appalachian Christianity (2001), was also published by the University Press of Kentucky.

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