Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area by Harry M. Caudill

No book about our region has had a bigger impact than NIGHT COMES TO THE CUMBERLANDS by Harry M. Caudill (1922-1990), a 1963 book seeking to explain how Appalachia got to be how it has become. At a time when politicians actually read books, it has been credited with encouraging President Johnson to come to Eastern Kentucky to declare a national War on Poverty. Harry Caudill was a lawyer in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and a state legislator and a descendant of many generations of mountain people from whom he inherited the gifts of a storyteller.  His grasp of history was great enough to land him a job, late in his career, as a history professor at the University of Kentucky, and his political acumen great enough to land him the faculty position on the Board of Trustees. This book is so comprehensive that it has been both praised and criticized by both those who subscribe to the "culture of poverty" explanation and those who see structures of exploitation as the cause of poverty. Speakers at h