West Virginia Books

Believe it or not, WEST(by God)Virginia is not a part of Virginia! No, seriously folks, Richmond may be a great book, but it should not pop up under a search for West Virginia books! Sorry. And in case you're wondering, Charleston is the capital of West Virginia!

Practical, easy-to-read, fun guide!
Thanks to reading this book beforehand, our family had the best weekend trip in our lives!
Buy it, read it, travel, enjoy!!!!! :-)

P.S. To the author of the review on the bottom of the page: hey, smart pants, what does you review have to do with this book? People are making fun of you, be a sweety and delete it!

Your review skewed the system. Keep this info to yourself. The search engine has NOTHING to do with a review for a book. IDIOT!
The book ROCKS and, yes, while it has nothing to do with West Virginia, (and I consider that a plus) it explains in detail the ideocyracies of the fine city of Richmond.

I bought the books (2) when they first came out and Mr. Dillion signed both for me. He was born in the coal field and knew the subject of which he wrote. Just within the last year I have obtained a copy of the report on the fire from the Federal Mine folks. I wonder why it took them 39 years to make the report public.... and one name was wrong in the list of those that were killed in that fire at the Holden 22 mine. The man's name was Isom Ooten, not Isom Hooten.

I can only speak to one of the mine explosions discussed in this book, the Burton Mine Explosion at Craigsville, WV in 1958. Many of Mr. Dillon's facts were wrong in that chapter. I'd think the names of the miners killed would be easy for him to obtain, yet some of them were wrong. Makes me wonder about the rest of the book.

This book gives one insight into the dangers of coal mining and the cultural aspects of it historically. Extensive interviews, with those actually involved. Humanity interwoven with hard facts. I actually cried during some accounts.

This book has great information about West Virginia's forests. With the great abundance of hardwood trees. Has Over 150 photo's of sawmill's, and other logging interests. If you are into logging or West Virginia's past this is a book for you.

This book has over 300 pages.....to bad only 97 of them hold the entire information portion of the book. There is a few pages in the back dedicated to a lumberjack's dictionary. The rest of the pages are pictures, index and glossary. You could probably find those or better pictures online if you tried. Overall I feel that this book was a waste of money and of time.

I bought my copy in, I believe 1965. Having been raised in West Virginia and been involved in the lumber industry, it is a gem of that niche in history of the Mountain State. The old photos are great especially on having visited many of the places represented. I have often wondered if it was out of print and am happy to see I can still buy it. I have loaned my copy several times to friends interested in early days of this main-line industry.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Reading this was almost painful. Notice that other reviewers admit they don't fish. That is the first clue. I don't make a habit of trashing books but this really was quite bad.

West with the Rise was recommended to me, and I really thought it was going to be all about fly fishing. The fishing journey gives Barilla a comfortable place to think about the challenges starting a family. And it seemed to say a lot for his marriage that Barilla's wife accepted his need to be alone on a fishing trip for a summer.

The book was thoughtful, honest, and entertaining. Each sentence is a pleasure to read, and I don't experience this too often. Many analogies enrich the prose. I don't fish, and some of the details about fishing seemed to go over my head. Otherwise, I'd give it 5 stars. I enjoyed the book. My wife did too.

You only have to read the first page of this book to know that James Barilla is a fine writer. This book is funny, poignant and fascinating by turns. I'm no fisherman, but the narrative drew me in and taught me plenty, both in the fishing sections and the more personal passages, of which there are plenty for the layperson. I loved especially the narrator's voice and fell in love with him - the end of his story is one of the more touching things I've ever read.

A guidebook should do two things. First, it needs to present a lot of factual information about places in the area it describes. Second, it must evaluate the places in a way that is useful to its target audience. This book meets the first requirement: it gives some historical information about the Salt Lake area and it describes many stores, restaurants, hotels, and other locations that will interest travelers. It also talks about health care, education, and other topics that are useful to people considering moving to SLC. Unfortunately, this Insider's Guide fails the second requirement by describing pretty much everything in glowing terms: if you believe this book, everyone is nice, the restaurants are all good, and you can't stay in a bad hotel. Compared to the more useful and frank evaluations found in the better guidebooks such as Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, or Let's Go, this book is definitely second class.

This is a very good, informative book, written with warmth and humour by someone who obviously has a great affection for the area and it's people. I've visited Salt Lake City for the last 4 years as a tourist and, as I read this book I'm back there smiling at it's quirks, looking around it's buildings, eating in it's restaurants and shopping in it's malls. The book is as easy going as the place it describes and is written logically, filling the reader in with the history and background before moving them around the city with added knowledge and appreciation of all that's there. This book will be my companion when I visit again this year. Oh and why only 4 stars - colour photographs instead of black and white please!

I was a helicopter pilot that performed rescues in this area during this awful flood. First off, it was an honor to be there and help the fine people of West Virginia. But I was hoping for a product that captured a time-line of the events, with hopes that the materials would be organized in an organized chronological manner - hour by hour. So if that's what you're looking for, this isn't it. And while the information is there, it's placed all over the print job. This book provides a generous amount of detail, but presents like a compilation of news stories taped down, photoscreened, and printed. Not a bad angle...but the print job looks like a cut-and-paste production on slick paper. I enjoyed the book, and if you were there, you'll want to have this book as a reference.

This book is profusely illustrated with black and white photos and a rainfall map. Accounts of the flood are taken from various local newspapers, giving a local flavor to the book while also providing a good documentary of events useful to weather historians.

I highly recommend this guide to anyone who will be traveling in the Northeast as well as Canada. This guide gives you everything from upcoming events for the year to where to stay & eat. The maps are easy to read and follow. I have been a reader of the Mobil Guide for many years and it is continuing to give the most accurate, up-to-date travel information. This is the MUST-HAVE for the Northeast traveler.

The book gives a good overview of the areas with many addresses. Anyhow I found it a bit too black and white. It gives useful maps, but no coloured pictures from the areas, which would make it a bit more pleasant to read.

I have a lot of relatives in Monongalia County in West Virginia. This has helped me a lot in putting some of the pieces together in my search for my lineage. I found that some of her information was slightly incorrect, but the genesis of the information led me in the write direction. I was particularly impressed with the history of the County. The detail that Connie P. Rice went into was very beneficial in understanding the people of West Virginia. For myself, this was a purchase that I will never regret.

Comprehensive endeavor at showing how African Americans lived in a border county... race relations issues are weakly framed and the complexities of them are glossed over.... There was actually very little effort to enforce Virginia laws against free blacks before the Civil War and Ms. Rice posits local elites as being repressive and this was not the case. She also ignores the issue of miscegenation which was an important aspect of relations in this particular county. Ms. Rice also does not focus on the role of the Mason Dixon Line and the differences free blacks encountered between Pennsylvania and Virginia/West Virginia. The photographs are MAGNIFICENT and make the book worthwhile, regardless of any minor flaws.

A year or two ago, there was a sort of mid-level scandal in the
publishing world when, at around the same time, it was revealed that
James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, had palmed off as a
factual memoir what was, in reality, an almost total fabrication, and
that J.T. LeRoy, the author of Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful above
All Things, was not, in fact, the bizarre, very young, camera-shy
homosexual man that was presented to the public, but instead a woman
in her thirties named Laura Albert.
I'd read A Million Little Pieces a year or so before it was exposed as
fiction - no; "fiction" does it an undeserved credit - before it was
exposed as a load of horsefeathers, and for my own part, recognized it
before I was halfway through as the tissue of feeble, self-glorifying
lies it could not have been other than. I'd also read Sarah several
years earlier, and although I certainly considered Mr. LeRoy a very
odd character, I never saw any meaningful reason to doubt his
existence, or even give it any thought. It wasn't an issue. Sarah
remains one of the four or five greatest American novels of the past
ten years, and whether it was written by J.T. LeRoy, Laura Albert, or
a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter, it's a flat-out
masterpiece.
George Eliot wasn't really a man. The Ramones weren't really brothers.
Dr. Seuss did not, in reality, hold a valid medical license. You may
even be shocked to learn that my name isn't actually zarpex. But for
some reason, J.T. LeRoy is called a hoax. Authorial identity is one of
the crutches available to the aesthetically crippled. Few people, it
pains me to say, possess the faculties even to understand what they
like or dislike. The majority would wince at a glass of wine poured
from a bottle labeled "Gallo" and rhapsodize over the same wine poured
from a bottle labeled "Chateau Lafite." If Toni Morrison were to be
revealed in tomorrow's newspapers as a wealthy Caucasian, her writing
would suddenly be recognized as the facile twaddle it has always been,
and its newly identified creator would be hanged from the nearest tree
by the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature.
If anything, the invention of J.T. LeRoy should be regarded as a
creative accomplishment unto itself, stranger and more complex than
Ziggy Stardust (which, for all its endurance, was really little more
than a pseudonym), possessing both an absurdity and a plausibility
that stands toe-to-toe with Borat. And is it not possible that Laura
Albert could not have written her books without creating an alternate
character to speak through? Wagner had to dress in period costume to
compose; Brian Wilson, whose feet, as far as I know, have yet to touch
a surfboard, compensated by resting them in a box of sand when he sat
at the piano to write.
A misfortune of timing lumped an important work of art together with a
piece of crude literary onanism, and our culture is the weaker for it.
Do yourself a favor if you haven't already, and read Sarah.
The IAU stripped Pluto of its status as a planet, but you know what?
It's still out there.
By zarpex

I found this work to be moving, poetic and original. A year later I still find myself thinking about it. As I see it, the brouhaha about the author's identity is irrelevant. The book is not offered up as a memoir. It's presented and sold as fiction. So whether or not you approve of the author's behavior, there's actually no literary scam to speak of. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I read Sarah, it sure seemed like fiction to me--and extraordinary fiction at that. Instead of hounding the author, we should be encouraging this rare and extraordinary talent to write more.

This book is badly written and a total mess. Most of all it's boring. I could barely get through it. I couldn't believe all the hype surrounding this book when it was released. It turns out the hype had to do with the fake author and not the work itself.

I am disgusted with Laura Albert for using AIDS and HIV to further her own poorly written work.

From gawker.com
"In an email sent to Galleycat, JT Leroy's book agent, Ira Silverberg, comments on being completely duped into believing his client:

"A good hoax is wonderful thing," literary agent Ira Silverberg emailed me this morning. "I'm all for it if doesn't hurt anyone." The false identity that "JT LeRoy" presented to the world, however, is the furthest thing from a "good" hoax in Silverberg's mind. "People were deceived in a brutal way: playing the AIDS card to elicit support, money, connections. That is simply unacceptable. It is morally reprehensible."

And while pretending to have AIDS is, indeed, "morally reprehensible," parlaying that disposition into a friendship with Courtney Love, as Leroy did, is beyond human tolerance or comprehension."

From nymag.com
"Apparently, along with his multiple personalities, the disfiguring Kaposi's sarcoma he'd used as an excuse to stay hidden cleared up, and he stopped mentioning his HIV infection."

From nytimes.com
"Along the way Mr. Leroy gained the friendship and trust of celebrities and noted writers, who supported his career financially and offered him emotional support when he declared that he was infected with H.I.V."

Dennis Cooper agrees - see below:

From thefreelibrary.com
"But queer writer Michelle Tea (Valencia, Rent Girl) responded and cared enough to pen a fiery open letter to the person impersonating JT, calling herself "grossed out" by the scam and castigating Albert. "If you had even used your giant scam for something other than schmoozing with B-list celebs," Tea wrote, "or writing shallow articles about couture footwear, and perhaps used your doomed moment in the spotlight to champion the actual heroic trans, HIV+, homeless or survivor youths making art under the celebrity radar, I could possibly applaud your exploitation. Now I just think you're a massive loser, as everyone who offered you a leg up in your social climbing surely does. Hope all the cash makes the total loss of your soul worthwhile."

Dennis Cooper, for his part, wrote in his blog, "It's weird for me to think that I had one of the big hands in creating this monster. But let's hope that someday when the true ugliness of what Laura has done, especially to JT's most devoted fans, who are the real victims here, is assimilated and in recovery, the crazy and wacky aspects of the scare will let those of us who nudged it forward feel some amusement.""

This list of quotes could go on for pages upon pages.

There are now a number of reviews which, after it was revealed that JT LeRoy was a fictional persona, have taken to castigating the author rather than evaluating the merits of the work. This is a response to those who have taken this position.

Which part of novel, ahem ... fiction, don't you understand.

Let's do this one step at a time. You appear to be upset that the artist represented herself as HIV positive. Excuse me, would you mind pointing out where she did that. The answer, which you may not want to hear, is never. While there may be reviewers who carelessly made that claim, the truth is that Laura never made such a representation.

Second, you seem to object to the artistic use of another persona as the predicate for her writing. May I remind you that there are many female authors who represent themselves as male, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many male authors who went the other way. If you have seen the recent film based upon Bob Dylan's life (I believe his real name was actually Robert Zimmerman), you will note that they used 6 different characters to play him, mainly because he had "misrepresented" his past. What about Borat? At the time the movie was shot, the public figures thought they were talking to a foreign journalist. Did that deception inflame your passions in the same way?

Third, as to the lawsuit, the final chapter has yet to be written. That matter is on appeal and Ms. Albert has supplemented her team with a nationally known firm that will give her the representation that is appropriate to the important literary issues involved in this matter.

Finally, you should think of why you are so offended. Is the writing good; is the novel -- remember that word -- touching you. If so, you need to look into yourself as to why you are so enraged, particularly when you have not even bothered to check out the truth of the errors you espouse.

It's interesting how the ratings of this book have dropped in the year or so since JT Leroy was revealed as a false persona. I picked this book up specifically because I was interested in the literary scandal behind it, and of course the reading experience was directly connected to and influenced by the knowledge that the author was not a postadolescent man, but a 30-something woman. Maybe it's because I don't feel like I was personally duped, or because "Sarah" was never presented as a memoir, or because I don't mind a writer of fiction playing with his/her persona (Mark Twain, George Eliot, Lemony Snicket, to name a few), but I found the book more interesting *because* of this cleverly played intrigue. Without it, I'd think this was a solid first novel, something like a Denis Johnson piece with a Hold Steady soundtrack. With it, I kick in an extra half star.

I attended a talk Ken Light gave at the Photo SF show this past summer in San Francisco. He discussed this book at length, and shared stories from his career. I also met his wife, Melanie, who conducted the interviews and wrote the text of the book. They are both wonderfully committed to social justice and the use of photography and oral history as a mechanism for communication. I purchased the book later and found the photographs to be both beautiful and informative. Ken remains committed to film and uses medium format cameras. The quality of the images shows that it really works for him. The quality of writing is superb and adds tremendously to the enjoyment of the images. This is a model for anyone interested in documentary story telling and could be used as a complementary text for a course in this subject. I'm glad that Black and White images, along with stories from the "visits" Melanie and Ken had with the families still can find a publisher.

I am a native of McDowell County where many of these photographs were taken, and I cannot recall ever seeing people living in such squalor as was depicted in this book. I am surprised that the Lights were able to come up with so many photographs that represent the southern part of West Virginia in such a bad light. West Virginia does suffer from a depressed economy, but locations with the appalling conditions shown in these photos are not typical of the area. This must be a work of fiction. I hope people won't judge my beautiful state by this book.

Having lived in southern West Virginia for nearly 50 years, I find this work to be insulting to the people of southern West Virginia. The Lights must have looked long and hard to find places with the appalling conditions that have been depicted in this book. Granted, the economy of West Virginia is not stellar, but the majority of its citizens and its communities are not represented in this book. Yes, this state has been shaped by its coal heritage, but it has not been destroyed by it. Southern West Virginia still struggles, but not to the extent implied in these photographs. Those seeking a more accurate portrayal of life in coal communities should look elsewhere, or, better yet, visit and see for themselves.

While Light's pictures are moving and brilliantly taken, he uses his talent to make a second rate piece of agitprop.

This book would have been an accurate representation of coal mining in Appalachia in the 1920's, but it is grossly misrepresenting of this way of life as it exists today and it plays off some of the worst stereotypes of Appalachia including toothless hillbillies and Klansmen. Contemporary coal mining is dangerous work, and always will be, but mineworkers are well paid highly trained individuals who take pride in their ability to survive lean times.

Anyone interested in Appalachia should forego this piece of garbage, get in a car and go see it for themselves.

It doesn't get much better than this, which I guess you should expect from the Professor of Photojournalism at Berkeley! In classic style, Ken Light has captured,with stunning photography, a clear slice of life in the backwaters of the US. Wife Melanie Light has added excellent context with a series of oral histories. Some of it is shocking, some of it is amusing. It is all a riveting read and a must have book for collectors and the curious.