Booklist and Notes

Booklist and Notes George Brosi Adams, Shelby Lee. Appalachian Portraits. Iackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. 22 numbered pages of text by Lee Smith and 86 unnumbered pages of photographic plates and full-page photographs. Hardback in dust jacket. $40.00. Trade paperback. $20.00. This is a time when almost all photography books are attempting to portray the dignity of diverse people. A degrading book of photographs focusing on most ethnic or geographical groups should be unthinkable. Appalachian Portraits is a photography book which chooses as its subjects four sometimes overlapping categories of people: the retarded, the disfigured, the poor, and snake-handing people of faith. Andrews, V. C. Darkest Hour. New York: Pocket Books, 1993. 394 pages. Mass-market paperback. $5.99. When V. C. Andrews died a few years ago, ghost writers kept producing more books in each of the series she had begun. At this point, it is clear that very littie of her magic with word and story is left. However, there is a certain imaginative ability shown here as the writers try to combine mountain and Southern motifs by juxtaposing Gothic mansions and craggy cliffs. Baker, Howard, and lohn Netherron. Big South Fork Country. Nashville, Tennessee: Rutiedge Hill Press, 1993. Ove-sized hardback in dust jacket, illustrated with color photographs by the authors. $29.95. Howard Baker, a former Senate Majority and minority leader and chief of staff for former President Reagan, is a native of the Tennessee side of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a park his political clout helped create. His coffee-table celebration of his home region is a wonderful book of color photography. His commentary is light and enjoyable, but quite incomplete for those not familiar with the area, and those in Kentucky who may find it disconcerting that he totally ignores the Kentucky "half of the park! George Brosi sells both new and out-of-print, through the mail and brings a display of books for sale to regional events. His address is Appalachian Mountain Books, Route 2, Box 238, Whittier, North Carolina 28789. His phone number is 704586 -5319. 72 Bansemer, Roger. Mountains in the Mist: Impressions of the Great Smokies. Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing, 1993. 172 pages, illustrated by color paintings by the author. Oversized hardback in dust jacket. $26.95. This is a book of paintings by a Floridian who enjoyed visiting the Smokies as a boy and loves taking his small daughters there now. At the heart of this book are reproductions of acrylic paintings of both working and park-preserved farms in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Pictures of wildflowers, animals, scenery and people are here, but Bansemer always turns back to the old home-places. This book has a good feel for the old-fashioned way of life in the Smokies. Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. 177 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $20.00. Readers will be well rewarded as Wendell Berry's incisive wit and wisdom cut through the barrage of baloney that Americans face everyday. A rural Kentuckian who has combined academic and small farming pursuits with the art of poetry and fiction, Berry has a comprehensive world view that reveres oldfashioned community and sees many of today's woes as a direct result of its dissolution. Clark, Thomas D. Simon Kenton: Kentucky Scout. Ashland, Kentucky: !esse Stuart Foundation, a 1993 edition of a 1943 release. 208 pages, illustrated by Edward Shenton, edited and with an introduction by Melba Porter Hay. Trade paperback $8.95. The almost universally acknowledged dean of Kentucky historians amply demonstrates in this little biography how he gained his well-deserved reputation. This biography of one of the Midwest's most famous frontiersmen is equally suitable for junior high through senior citizen readers as it combines real history with lots of action and easy reading fun. Davis, Skeeter. Bus Fare to Kentucky: The Autobiography of Skeeter Davis. New York: Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing Group, 1993. 338 pages wirh photographs, discography, and index. Hardback in dust jacket. $19.95. Don't look here for the day, or even the year, Skeeter...