For much of the 19th century, it was fashionable for academics and historians in the West to subscribe to the “Great Man Theory” of history. The Great Man Theory, as it name implies, contends that the course of human events… Read More ›
Book Excerpts/News
You Needn’t Pay Them Any Mind: A Brief Look at the Treatment of American Indians in US History
It has never been properly explained to me why we still celebrate Columbus Day as a national holiday. What is it exactly are we supposed to be celebrating? The fact that some gold-crazed Italian convinced the Queen of Spain to… Read More ›
Rahm Emanuel: Chicago’s Mayor of Go F*** Yourself
Editor’s Note: At the present moment a small, but passionate group of community members on Chicago’s South Side are well into their third week of a hunger strike aimed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel in an attempt to get him to… Read More ›
Mountaineers Are Seldom Free: Union-Busting in the West Virginia Mine Wars
Everything on and about my person had been coated in a thick film of stale tobacco smoke. After 30 days, 10,000 miles and 4 cartons of cigarettes, the air inside the cabin of my car had obtained the same translucence… Read More ›
Strictly Business: West Virginian Statehood & The Geography of Poverty
“God has blessed West Virginia with prolific hand; a topography grand to contemplate; a wealth unparalleled in coal, iron and oil—her hills fairly groan with undeveloped resources, and all of these at the very threshold of the great marts of… Read More ›
The Bones of a Country: One Night in a Dead California Desert Town
Driving the 220 miles of road that lie between the Tehachapi mountains and the California-Arizona border, I started hearing the voice of Tom Joad ring in my ears. This here’s a murder country, he said to me. This here’s the bones of… Read More ›
We Are Our Mountain’s Keeper: The Fight for the Soil & Soul of Appalachia
West Virginia is no country for young men. Nor is it a country for old men, brown men, poor men or women. West Virginia is a country for rich men; men with no names and no faces who live far… Read More ›
Real People, Fake Weed: A Slice of Life High on Spice
There are few things in this world that feel sketchier than meeting up with a person you’ve never met before in a random gas station parking lot. One of those things happens to be meeting up with a person you’ve… Read More ›
A Nation With No Ears: The History and Legacy of Little Bighorn
“The love of possessions is a disease with them. They take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own and fence their neighbours away. If… Read More ›
Mississippi Crumbling: The Inheritance of Inequity in The Magnolia State
“Everybody in the Mississippi Delta was a racist, white or black. Racism was built into our bones. It is a thing we will never recover from having committed, but it also had its side that we always benefitted from…I lived… Read More ›
Virally Suppressed - Muckraking For The Modern World 