The Road to Poverty - 9780521655460

The Road to PovertyThe Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia\nAuthor(s): Dwight B. Billings, Kathleen M. Blee\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521655460, 978-0521655460\nSynopsis\nKathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially poor section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. The authors uncover the systemic problems and patterns of low income by tracing its socio-cultural, economic, and political development of Clay County from its earliest non-native settlement and agricultural development, to the advent of the coal industry, to the present day. This study of the long-term, institutional basis of rural poverty contains some fascinating, new local historical detail, based upon the authors' meticulous archival research. This book makes an important contribution to basic res.