Selected Kentucky Resources

EKU Libraries > Branches & Collections > University Archives > Patron Information > Selected Kentucky Resources

Compiled by Charles C. Hay III, University Archivist

Literary, Historical, and Reference Sources

Jones, Loyal. Appalachian Values. The Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1994. Jones, a noted Appalachian scholar, and Brunner, a Berea photographer, team up to present a series of brief written and pictorial essays to counter the persistent negative stereotypes about Appalachian people. Evocative photographs cover such topics as religion, personalism, humility and modesty, patriotism, and love of family and place.

Billings, Dwight, Norman, Gurney, and Ledford, Katherine (eds.). Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region. University Press of Kentucky, 1999. An assemblage of essays written by some of the region’s leading scholars, activists, and artists in response to recent negative depictions of Appalachia.

Drake, Richard. A History of Appalachia. University Press of Kentucky, 2001. A textbook treatment of the history of the region from which Eastern draws many of its students.

Kleber, John, Harrison, Lowell, and Klotter, James (eds.). The Kentucky Encyclopedia. University Press of Kentucky, 1992. Over 1,000 pages of articles (some of extensive length), with bibliographies on any subject imaginable about Kentucky history and culture. This inexpensively priced one-volume work is the best basic reference source on Kentucky.

Ellis, William, Everman, Hank, and Sears, Richard. Madison County: 200 Years In Retrospect. Madison County Historical Society, 1985. This definitive scholarly history analyzes one of Kentucky’s most historical counties, its many paradoxes, and contradictions.

Kubiak, Lavinia. Madison County Rediscovered: Selected Historic Architecture. Madison County Historical Society, 1988. Selected historic structures and sites throughout rural Madison Countyand the cities of Richmond and Berea are thoroughly analyzed in terms of their architectural style and historical significance. Several structures, along with the older part of EKU’s campus, are on the National Register of Historic Places

DeRosier, Linda Scott. Creeker: A Woman’s Journey. University Press of Kentucky, 1999. A poignant autobiographical account of an eastern Kentucky woman’s odyssey from a shy mountain girl, born near Loretta Lynn’s birthplace deep in the “hollers” of Appalachia, to a college professor. Gracefully written, DeRosier vividly captures the many enduring values of the southern mountain culture and the effect of modern society on them.

Caudill, Harry. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. Little, Brown and Company, 1962. Classic social protest treatise about much of EKU’s service region. Caudill unabashedly criticizes the nearly two hundred years of economic and political exploitation of the region’s people and resources both by businesses and government. Useful information about timber, coal, education, politics, demographics, infrastructure, and stereotypes of the region are covered in the monograph. Unfortunately, many of the evils presented by Caudill still plague the region.

Walker, Frank X. Affrilachia. Old Cove Press, 1999. A Kentucky African American author’s series of evocative contemporary poems create a sense of place, be it, Appalachia (Walker’s birth place), the bluegrass, or the projects.

Lucas, Marion and Wright, George. A History of Blacks in Kentucky. The Kentucky Historical Society, 1992. Commissioned by the Kentucky legislature, this two-volume scholarly work by noted historians traces the development and impact of African Americans in Kentucky’s history.

Wharton, Mary and Barbour, Roger. Bluegrass Land & Life: Land, Character, Plants, and Animals of the Inner Bluegrass Region of Kentucky; Past, Present, and Future. University Press of Kentucky, 1991. The classic monograph by prominent biologists with numerous photographs (some color) and drawings (primarily of a technical nature) which carefully analyze the unique biological, human, and ecological character of the Bluegrass region around the Lexington/Fayette County area.

Alvey, Gerald. Kentucky Bluegrass Country. University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Noted folklorist discusses a number of customs and practices which have developed in the Bluegrass area. Horse breeding, the cultures of tobacco and bourbon, the forms of architecture, the codes of the hunt, the traditions of gambling and dueling, and regional food ways of the Inner Bluegrass Region are among some of the topics covered.

Harrison, Lowell and Klotter, James. A New History of Kentucky. University Press of Kentucky, 1997. The definitive, modern scholarly history of Kentucky which replaces Thomas D. Clark’s classic History of Kentucky (1937). Thoroughly researched with an extensive bibliography. Both gender and racial contributions to Kentucky’s history are adequately represented.

Klotter, James. Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox, 1900-1950. The Kentucky Historical Society, 1996. Insightful scholarly historical analysis of the triumphs and tragedies in the first half of twentieth-century Kentucky.

Pearce, John Ed. Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930-1963. University Press of Kentucky, 1987. Critical analysis of Kentucky’s often fractious Democratic party by a noted Kentucky newspaperman. Pearce, John Ed. Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Appalachia. University Press of Kentucky, 1994. A good historical description with some analysis of a dark and bloody phase of Kentucky’s post-Civil War mountain culture.

Ward, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky. University of Tennessee Press, 1988. The only definitive modern one-volume comprehensive analysis of Kentucky’s literary heritage.

Hay, Charles, Usher, Chris and Whitlock, Charles D. Eastern Kentucky University: Then and Now. Harmony House, 1992. This pictorial volume about Eastern is divided into two parts. The first part consists of a series of attractive campus color photographs taken by award-winning photographer Usher during 1991. The last part is comprised of selected historical photographs of the Eastern campus along with a brief narrative history of the university.

Appleton, Thomas, Hay, Melba Porter, Klotter, James and Stephens, Thomas. Kentucky: Land of Tomorrow. The Kentucky Historical Society, 1998. Colorful pictorial history of Kentucky.

Stuart, Jesse. The Thread That Run So True. Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1958. Classic autobiographical account by a very prominent and extremely popular Kentucky and regional author of the struggles and personal rewards he experienced as a rural Appalachian school teacher and administrator.

Mason, Bobbie Ann. Clear Springs: A Memoir. Random House, 1999. Probably Kentucky’s most prominent contemporary writer offers an intensely personal and gracefully written account of growing up on a farm in Western Kentucky. Other notable works by Mason, some which have been made into movies, include In Country: a Novel (1985) and Shiloh and Other Stories (1982).

Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River. University Press of Kentucky, 2000. Eastern professor emeritus of history, primarily using numerous oral interviews from the EKU Libraries Special Collections and Archives’ extensive oral history collection, looks at the river’s cultural and economic history and its significance to the region.

Clark, Thomas D. Kentucky; Land of Contrast. Harper & Row, 1968. Dean of Kentucky’s twentieth century historians looks at the seemingly paradoxical, often confounding, images of the Bluegrass state. Clark views Kentucky’s strong attachment to localism as a major impediment to progress.

Still, James. River of Earth. University Press of Kentucky, 1978. Originally published in 1940. Realistic novel depicting the incredibly poor social and economic conditions faced by many eastern Kentuckians during the 1930s and the vagaries of the coal industry. Still vividly uses local language, agricultural, medical, and social customs to portray family life of the mountaineer.

Berry, Wendell. Nathan Coulter: a novel. North Point Press, 1985. Originally published in 1960. Berry, a noted Kentucky novelist and poet and zealous defender of agrarianism, presents probably one the of better views of Kentucky’s tobacco culture.

Searles, David. A College for Appalachia: Alice Lloyd on Caney Creek. University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Well-researched history of the trials and tribulations of a private college in EKU’s service region.

Aron, Stephen. How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Johns Hopkins, 1996. Highly respected scholarly, social and historical analysis of Kentucky’s early development.

Breckinridge, Mary. Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service. University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Originally published in 1952. Traces the development of health-care services to southeastern Kentucky from 1900 to 1950.

Campbell, Tracy. Short of the Glory: The Fall and Redemption of Edward F. Prichard Jr. University Press of Kentucky, 1998. An excellent and thoroughly researched biography of one of Kentucky’s most brilliant (keenly interested in educational reform), yet flawed, major twentieth-century personalities.

Ulack, Richard, Raitz, Karl and Pauer, Gyula (eds.). Atlas of Kentucky. University Press of Kentucky, 1998. A very rich, comprehensive, and critical analysis of historical trends and the current state of physical, economic, demographic, environmental, social, political, and other components of Kentucky’s geographical landscape. An excellent reference source which is elaborately and colorfully illustrated with numerous charts and graphs.

Bryant, Ron D. Kentucky History: An Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood, 2000.

Jones, Arthur. The Art of Paul Sawyier. University Press of Kentucky, 1976. Beautifully illustrated examples of one of central Kentucky’s most noted early-twentieth-century landscape artists.

Fox, Jr., John. Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. University Press of Kentucky, 2000. Originally published in 1903. One of the best-selling novels ever produced by a Kentucky author. It depicts the adventurous life and trials and tribulations of a young boy caught up in Civil War Kentucky who leaves the mountains and attains success along with tragedy in the Bluegrass region.

Allen, James Lane. Blue-grass Region of Kentucky, and other Kentucky Articles. Harper & Brothers, 1899. A marvelous collection of travelog articles that describe the economic advantages, the folkways, the customs, and the pace of life in eastern and central Kentucky by one of Kentucky’s premier authors.

Sprague, Stuart. Eastern Kentucky: A Pictorial History. Donning, 1986. An extensive collection of historical photos of the state’s eastern Kentucky region.

Arnow, Harriette. The Dollmaker. Poignant novel of a self-reliant woman and her family from the Kentucky hills who are uprooted from their home to the chaos of World War II Detroit and a pitiless world of unendurable poverty.

Media Resources

Many of the following media resources have originated from Kentucky Educational Television (KET). Most of the resources are in EKU’s Division of Media Resources film and video collection. Consult the library’s E-Quest Online Public Access Catalog for the sources.

This Other Eden. A 1980 three-part KET presentation by a group of prominent historians and videographers tracing Kentucky’s history and culture from the Native American period to the 1970s.

Conversations with Distinguished Kentuckians. A series of KET interviews conducted with distinguished Kentuckians such as former Eastern president Robert R. Martin, Governor Bert T. Combs, Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper owner Barry Bingham, Happy Chandler, educational reform leader Edward Prichard Jr., and others. Interviews conducted in the 1970s and 1980s.

Harlan County, U.S.A. A controversial 1973 film production about union forces’ bitter clash with the coal industry and their local supporters in Harlan County (one of the counties in EKU’s service region). Appalshop productions. Productions such as Appalshop director Herbie Smith’s 1995 Beyond Measure: Appalachian Culture and Economy, about a great variety of Appalachian subjects from a social-activist viewpoint by a Kentucky-based film shop in Whitesburg in Letcher County (part of EKU’s service region). Using the keyword Appalshop will yield over thirty citations in EKU library E-Quest electronic catalog.

Trouble Behind. A controversial 1990 film by Kentucky independent producer Robby Henson concerning racial unrest which took place in Corbin during the 1920s.

Web Sites

Eastern’s excellent library web site which possess numerous sources and links. Kentucky’s Virtual Library which has numerous databases, many full-texted, in a great variety of disciplines.

Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper’s very useful links to various activities of regional interest. This is an excellent resource for local and regional information.

Very informative Kentucky state government web site.

Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives web site. Check out “other links” on home page for a very thorough listing by subject of accurate and reliable web sites.

Official Richmond city government web site.

Iclub is a site with numerous links that have a some useful information about Madison County.

The Richmond Register, Richmond’s local newspaper. Papers are not archived online.

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