Although health outcomes and other measures of well-being in the United States have vastly improved over recent decades, gains in Appalachia have been more modest than in other parts of the country. The common refrain is that this 'lagging behind' is a result of Appalachia's persistent poverty and bleak labour-market outlook; yet economic explanations reveal an incomplete picture. Appalachian Health explores major challenges and opportunities for promoting the health and well-being of the people of Appalachia, a historically underserved population. It considers the intersections of health and social, political and economic factors to shed light on the trends affecting mortality and morbidity among the region's residents. This edited volume brings together high-profile authors from across academia, public health and government to offer perspectives on a wide range of topics including health behaviors, environmental justice, and pandemic preparedness. This volume also provides updated data on issues such as opioid abuse, 'deaths of despair', and the social determinants of health. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Appalachian Health offers a timely and much-needed optimistic account of health status in Appalachia. By more closely studying Appalachia – which is, in many ways, emblematic of rural regions across the United States – this volume both better illuminates the complex determinants of health and offers a more systematic way to evaluate processes affecting well-being in rural places.

In June of 1970, the body of 24-year-old Nancy Morgan was found inside a government-owned car in Madison County, North Carolina. It had been four days since anyone had heard from the bubbly, hard-working brunette who had moved to the Appalachian community less than a year prior as an organizer for Volunteers in Service to America. At the time of her death, her tenure in the Tar Heel State was just weeks from ending, her intentions set on New York and nursing school and a new life that she would never see. The initial investigation was thwarted by inept police work, jurisdictional confusion, and the influence of local corruption. Fourteen years would pass before an arrest in the case would be made, but even then, a pall would be cast over the veracity of the evidence. Met Her on the Mountain is the culmination of former Los Angeles Times staff writer Mark Pinsky's efforts to solve the 40-year-old mystery once and for all. An exhaustive piece of investigative journalism, Pinsky dissects this modern Southern Gothic tale and takes readers on a journey to convince them that the truth of Morgan's murder is within reach.

"The history of war teems with occasions where the interception of dispatches and orders written in plain language has resulted in defeat and disaster for the force whose intentions thus became known at once to the enemy." So begins Colonel Parker Hitt's 1916 Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers, a foundational text in the history of cryptology. Due largely in part to this manual and Hitt's early cipher inventions, codes became the default communication method for the U. S. military in the twentieth century as codebreakers and cipher machines had proved their worth during World War I. A modified version of Hitt's invention, the M--94 cipher device, was used by the Army for three decades until the Germans decrypted the code during the middle of WWII. To this day, Hitt is known as the "father of American military cryptology." In the first biography of this American hero, historian Betsy Rohaly Smoot brings Hitt's legacy to the fore, chronicling his extraordinary military career and deviation from masculine tropes during the early twentieth century. Smoot reveals that Hitt was a champion for women in the workplace, giving his support to employment of the "Hello Girls," American female telephone operators for the First Army switchboard and working alongside his wife, Genevieve Young Hitt, the first woman to break ciphers for the United States government. Readers of Liza Mundy's Code Girls and David Kahn's The Codebreakers will find an insightful profile of not only an American hero in Parker Hitt's story, but of early military cryptology as well. Drawing from a never-before-seen cache of Hitt's letters, photographs, and diaries, Smoot introduces readers to this unique cryptanalyst's life.

Susanna (Susan) Preston Shelby Grigsby (1830-1891), a white plantation mistress and slaveholder, struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky, both morally and financially. She yearned to create a happy, solvent household for her family and domestic workers, both free and enslaved. As the nineteenth century progressed, so shifted labor patterns within the plantation household. Paid white lower-class women worked alongside black slaves. And as hard times fell on Grigsby, financial imperatives and custom prevailed over her moral qualms. Class, race, and gender collide in Susanna Delfino's Bonds of Womanhood: The World of a White Anti-Slavery Slaveholder. Drawing on Grigsby's correspondences, Delfino seeks to understand how white women participated in the economic transformation of 1840s Kentucky. Rather than a simple account of white domestic labor, Grigsby's letters reveal a rich variety of interlocking gender, class, and race-related issues. While Grigsby held strong antislavery feelings, she was still in fact a large slaveholder by Kentucky standards. Even so, she also hired white houseworkers as a way to participate in a free labor economy. All this is further complicated by the power structures inherent in the patriarchal southern plantation house. This volume is a compelling addition to the continuing conversation on the complicity of white, southern women in the slave labor economy.

Hundreds of World War II memoirs and accounts have been written and documented, but the stories about the bravery and valor of the women who also served are rarely told. In Lieutenant Sonia Vagliano: Inside the World War II Refugee Crisis, Vagliano provides a gripping and compelling account of how she and her team of four women were attached to a First Army unit that arrived in Normandy two weeks after D Day. From 1943 to 1945, Vagliano followed her unit from Normandy to Paris, through Belgium, and finally into Germany where they cared for 20,000 displaced persons and prisoners of war each day. Rich in detail, Vagliano not only describes her experiences - from caring for thousands of refugees in the worst possible conditions, to defusing landmines, and being kidnapped, shot at, torpedoed, and bombed - she also recounts the major events of the war in Europe including the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, and, finally, the concentration camps. Spending five weeks at Buchenwald repatriating the 21,000 prisoners still there, she bared a unique witness to the transition period between the liberation of the camp and its turnover to the Russians in July 1945, and saw first-hand "to what extremes the human imagination can go in its search for the most cruel methods of torture." Striking a balance between daredevil-level escapades and the sobering reality of a war-time account, this book won the 1982 Saint Simon award for best memoir of the year under its original title Les Demoiselles de Gualle. Now translator and editor Martha Noel Evans brings the young French lieutenant's memoirs to English-speaking audiences for the first time.

"Grape is the sweetest betrayal. There is no removing the stain Of it say moms everywhere & Even if kids choose it last; They choose it, as loyal To its sugar as any." When authorities converged on the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, known as Jonestown, in Guyana on November 18, 1978, more than 900 members were found dead, the result of murder-suicide. The massacre, led by cult leader James "Jim" Jones, was the largest mass loss of American lives before September 11, 2001. Yet this event is largely absent in American history. When the mass suicides are remembered, it is usually comically or instructively: "Don't drink the Kool-Aid," as the majority of those who died that day drank or were injected with grape flavored Flavor-Aid. Much has been documented about this tragic day and how the congregants were killed, yet little is written about the individuals and their lived experiences. In this profound and provocative poetry collection, darlene anita scott corrects that which has been disremembered and honors the people who perished. She elevates and gives voice to the children, teenagers, and adults whose hopes, dreams, and lives were just as hopeful and mundane as any others yet have been overlooked and overshadowed by the other focuses of history. The distinct, haunting, and unforgettable poems in Marrow cut to the bone while also acknowledging and giving tribute to those who died on that fateful day.

Jennie C. Benedict's The Blue Ribbon Cook Book represents the very best in the tradition of southern regional cooking. Recipes for such classic dishes as Parker House rolls, lamb chops, corn pudding, Waldorf salad, and cheese and nut sandwiches are nestled among longtime local favorites such as apple butter, rice pudding, griddle cakes, and Benedictine, the cucumber sandwich spread that bore Benedict's name. Throughout the cookbook, Benedict's delightful voice shines. Benedict, who was once the most famous caterer in Louisville and also operated a celebrated tea room and soda fountain, trained with Fannie Farmer at the Boston Cooking School. As a creative entrepreneur, Benedict had a significant influence on the local culture and foodways. Her sweet and savory dishes were the stars of many Derby parties, and yet she placed equal emphasis on simple luncheon and dinner recipes to satisfy the needs of home cooks. While her popular dishes graced genteel tables all over the Bluegrass, Benedict's chicken salad sandwiches, sold from a pushcart, offered Louisville children the first school lunches in the city.This edition of The Blue Ribbon Cook Book will welcome new generations of readers and cooks - those who remember wearing white gloves and eating delicate tea sandwiches at the downtown department store as well as those who want to make satisfying regional classics such as blackberry jam cake like their grandmother used to make. Food writer Susan Reigler introduces the story of Benedict's life and cuisine, and this edition is the first to come complete with the now-famous spread that bears Benedict's name.

"We are all now writing stories. Sometimes in memory, sometimes in air. The wind lifts and passes us in gusts. Our stories scatter over continents, camouflaged histories we cannot share. "In this exquisite collection of short stories, readers are introduced to individuals whose existence reveals "the daily miracle" of their inner lives. With eloquent, lush language, Manini Nayar brings to the forefront immigrant women making their way in the world as mothers, wives, as outliers, and as rebels. She writes about their insistence on autonomy and on the absurdity and triumphs of their struggles. While readers will meet a wide array of characters throughout the stories, it is Nina with whom they will become most familiar as she appears throughout the collection: first, as a young wife brought to the US by her husband, Siddarth Vellodi; second, as an older sister; and third, as a (divorced) mother whose daughter tragically ran away years before. This work speaks to the obstacles with marriage, tradition, and culture - "Wives were not to be loved but endured like a menstrual headache. Her own husband had not loved her nor she him. But the Dear Departed had given her a son who was hers and hers only" - and the challenges with finding one's voice in a country whose language and communication can often be misconstrued and misunderstood. Being Here provides a compelling and profound voice to lived experiences, and exudes with remarkable observations, reflective insights, and poetic prose.

They were known as "political soulmates" who shared a "special relationship". Grounded in similar democratic systems, common historical discourses, and sustained military alliance through several of the twentieth century's most contentious conflicts, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the American president Ronald Reagan shared a deep respect, admiration, and friendship, as well as similar ideologies. Many analysts and historians recycle a popular conception of the two New Right leaders joined at the hip politically, yet their relationship was more complex and nuanced. Drawing on a host of recently declassified documents from the Reagan-Thatcher years, A Diplomatic Meeting: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Art of Summitry, provides an innovative basis to understand the development and nature of the relationship between the two leaders. Author James Cooper boldly challenges the popular conflation of the leaders' platforms and proposes that Reagan and Thatcher's summitry demonstrated that foreign policy was not distinct from domestic policy: there was just policy, and the related politics of it. Summits, therefore, were a significant opportunity for world leaders to further their own domestic agenda. Cooper utilizes the relationship between Reagan and Thatcher to demonstrate that summitry politics transcended any distinction between foreign policy and domestic politics - a major objective of Reagan and Thatcher as they sought to consolidate power and implement their domestic economic programs in a parallel quest to reverse notions of their countries' "decline". This unique and significant study about the making of the Reagan-Thatcher relationship uses their key meetings as avenues of exploration and argues that there is fluidity between the domestic and international spheres, which is underappreciated within existing interpretations of the leaders' relationship, Anglo-American relations and, more broadly, in the realm of international affairs.

In Integrated, James W. Miller explores an often ignored aspect of America's struggle for racial equality. He relates the story of the Lincoln Institute - an all-black high school in Shelby County, Kentucky, where students prospered both in the classroom and on the court. In 1960, the Lincoln Tigers men's basketball team defeated three all-white schools to win the regional tournament and advance to one of Kentucky's most popular events, the state high school basketball tournament. This proud tradition of African American schools - a celebration of their athletic achievements - was ironically destroyed by integration. This evocative book is enriched by tales of individual courage from men who defied comfort and custom. Miller describes how one coach at a white high school convinced his administrators and fans that playing the black schools was not only the right thing to do, but that it was also necessary. He discusses John Norman "Slam Bam" Cunningham, the former Lincoln Institute standout who became an Armed Forces All-Star and later impressed University of Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp on the Wildcats' home floor. Miller also tells the story of a young tennis prodigy whose dreams were denied because he could not play at the white country club, but who became the first African American to start for an integrated Kentucky high school basketball championship team. Featuring accounts from former Lincoln Institute players, students, and teachers, Integrated not only documents the story of a fractured sports tradition but also addresses the far-reaching impact of the civil rights movement in the South.

This in-depth study offers a new examination of a region that is often overlooked in political histories of the Bluegrass State. George G. Humphreys traces the arc of politics in western Kentucky from avid support of the Democratic Party to its present-day Republican identity. He demonstrates that, despite its relative geographic isolation, the counties west of the eastern boundary of Breckinridge County down to the Tennessee state line played significant roles in state and national politics during the New Deal and postwar eras.Drawing on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, Humphreys explores the area's political transformation from a solid Democratic voting block to a conservative stronghold by examining how developments such as advances in agriculture, the diversification of the economy, and the Civil Rights Movement affected the region. Addressing notable deficiencies in the existing literature, this impressively researched study will leave readers with a deeper understanding of post-1945 Kentucky politics.

From the 1500s up until the dawn of World War I, horses played an imperative role in modern warfare, contributing their share to the rise and fall of nations. The enduring quote from Shakespeare's Richard III (1593), "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" speaks to the abiding image of cavalry embedded in the cultural memory of the West. Riding to Arms: A History of Horsemanship and Mounted Warfare is Charles Caramello's thorough examination of the evolution of horsemanship and cavalry over the centuries. He follows how the debate between 'art and utility' in horsemanship caused a shift from the formal - equitation and manège dressage – to the practical – namely mounted warfare. He also addresses the advent of mechanized warfare that led to the end of horse cavalry. In addition to practical history, Caramello engages with selected primary and secondary texts on horsemanship, from early works like Thomas Blundeville's The Arte of Ryding and Breakinge Greate Horses (1660) to Louis A. DiMarco's War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider (2008), discussing the ways these works shaped horsemanship and calvary practices both in in their own time and throughout history. Melding together history and historiography, Riding to Arms: A History of Horsemanship and Mounted Warfare is a captivating work celebrating one of man's most constant companions in both war and peace.

Had Elizabeth 'Bess' Clements Abell (1933-2020) been a boy, she would likely have become a politician like her father, Earle Clements. Effectively barred from that career because of her gender, she forged her own path by helping family friends Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. As President Johnson's Social Secretary, Abell earned the nickname 'Iron Butterfly' for her graceful but firm leadership of social life in the White House. Afterward, she maintained her importance in Washington D.C., serving as chief of staff to Joan Mondale and co-founding a public relations company. Donald A. Ritchie and Terry L. Birdwhistell draw on Abell's own words and those of others close to her to tell her remarkable story. Focusing on her years working for the Johnson campaign and her time in the White House, this engaging oral history provides a window into Abell's life as well as an insider's view of social life in the nation's capital during the tumultuous 1960s.

Frances Peter was one of the eleven children of Dr. Robert Peter, a surgeon for the Union army. The Peter family lived on Gratz Park near downtown Lexington, where nineteen-year-old Frances began recording her impressions of the Civil War. Because of illness, she did not often venture outside her home but was able to gather a remarkable amount of information from friends, neighbors, and newspapers. Peter's candid diary chronicles Kentucky's invasion by Confederates under Gen. Braxton Bragg in 1862, Lexington's month-long occupation by Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, and changes in attitude among the slave population following the Emancipation Proclamation. As troops from both North and South took turns holding the city, she repeatedly emphasized the rightness of the Union cause and minced no words in expressing her disdain for the hated "secesh." Her writings articulate many concerns common to Kentucky Unionists. Though she was an ardent supporter of the war against the Confederacy, Peter also worried that Lincoln's use of authority exceeded his constitutional rights. Her own attitudes towards blacks were ambiguous, as was the case with many people in that time. Peter's descriptions of daily events in an occupied city provide valuable insights and a unique feminine perspective on an underappreciated aspect of the war. Until her death by epileptic seizure in August 1864, Peter conscientiously recorded the position and deportment of both Union and Confederate soldiers, incidents at the military hospitals, and stories from the countryside. Her account of a torn and divided region is a window to the war through the gaze of a young woman of intelligence and substance.

Because screenwriter Robert Riskin spent most of his career collaborating with legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra, Riskin's own unique contributions to film have been largely overshadowed. With five Academy Award nominations to his credit for the monumental films Lady for a Day, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, Here Comes the Groom, and It Happened One Night (for which he won the Oscar), Riskin is often imitated but rarely equaled. Capra's Shadow: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Robert Riskin is the first detailed critical examination of the Hollywood pioneer's life and work. In addition to being one of the great screenwriters of the classic Hollywood era, Riskin was also a producer and director, founding his own film company and playing a crucial role in the foundation of the Screen Writers Guild. During World War II, Riskin was one of the major forces behind propaganda filmmaking. He worked in the Office of War Information and oversaw the distribution - and later, production - of films and documentaries in foreign theaters. He was interested in showing the rest of the world more than just an idealized version of America; he looked for films that emphasized the spiritual and cultural vibrancy within the US, making charity, faith, and generosity of spirit his propaganda tools. His efforts also laid the groundwork for a system of distribution channels that would result in the dominance of American cinema in Europe in the postwar years.Author Ian Scott provides a unique perspective on Riskin and the ways in which his brilliant, pithy style was realized in Capra's enduring films in In Capra's Shadow. Riskin's impact on cinema extended far beyond these films as he helped spread Hollywood cinema abroad and articulated his vision of a changing America.

What does a writer do when he's got a family that includes a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten, the brains behind Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man, a trio of gay puppeteers, the world's leading birdwatcher, sixties hippies, a Dutch stowaway who served in an all-black regiment during the American Civil War, a mother of unusual compassion and understanding, and a convicted murderer? He tells their stories and secrets, illuminating 150 years of American life along the way. Dan Bessie begins the journey through his family history with his great-grandfather in the cargo hold of a ship bound for New York on the storm-tossed Atlantic. What follows are stories of his grandfather's various entrepreneurial schemes (including a folding butter box business), a grandmother who was voted "New York's Prettiest Shop Girl" (and who resisted the recruitment efforts of various city madams), and his uncle Harry's Turnabout Theater in Los Angeles (a renowned puppet theater drawing patrons as diverse as Shirley Temple, Ray Bradbury, and Albert Einstein). Through inherited journals and literary effects, Bessie comes to a new understanding of his father, Alvah. An actor and writer, he fought in the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. When he returned to the States, he headed to the Warner back lots to begin a screenwriting career. But as congress began investigating radicals in the film industry, Alvah was blacklisted for his Communist sympathies and was soon sent to jail as one of the Hollywood Ten. His grandmother's cousin, Sidney Lenz, wrote Lenz on Bridge, a classic guide to the game of contract bridge. Bessie describes what was billed as the Bridge Battle of the Century, a 1931 match between Lenz and an upstart opponent that was covered by journalists from all over the world. Bessie's brother-in-law Wes Wilson designed rock and roll posters for the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco during the 1960s, living a counterculture existence vastly different from the bridge-mad Depression Era. Cousin Michael was heir to the compulsive storytelling characterizing many of the Bessies. He found his niche in publishing, co-founding the Atheneum Press and shaping books by people such as Anwar Sadat, Edward Albee, and Aldous Huxley. With an equally impressive career, Uncle Leo built the country's fifth largest advertising agency. A passion of a different sort led cousin Phoebe Snetsinger to travel from Webster Groves, Missouri, to the far corners of Africa and Asia. The world's leading birder, she sighted 8,400 different birds-nearly 85 percent of the species known to exist. An extraordinary strain of creativity runs through the Bessie and Burnett clans, and Rare Birds celebrates the colorful diversity of a remarkable and accomplished family. While their choices and professions run the gamut of the American experience in the twentieth century, the history of the nation can be traced in these people's lives. Bessie's passionate birds of a feather gather to sing their unique song across decades and generations. Dan Bessie has been a film writer, director, producer, and animator since apprenticing on Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM in 1956.