Clinch River Pearls reflects actual events that made headlines across the nation when a tiny hamlet became the crucible of racial tension during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s. When the Supreme Court dictated that schools could no longer be racially segregated, the citizens of Clinton, Tennessee were catapulted into confrontation and violence. The story focuses on blacks and whites alike; on students, teachers, parents, grandparents, and others who took no sides in the great debate but were determined to continue as before, whether that involved compliance with law and local norms or defiance of them. The demonstrations and riots that rocked Clinton severely tested black families on Foley Hill, especially those who became known as the Clinton 12, those first black students required to implement integration. The order tested families (with and without children), leaders in the community attempting to cope, teachers, farmers, and even the majority white students. This story is a multifaceted view of tumultuous times in a quaint, bucolic community, showing how people coped with a new world. Over fifty years later, this is a story that still needs to be told. About the Author: Danny Thomas grew up in East Tennessee. After graduating from Clinton High School and playing football for legendary Bear Bryant at Alabama, he worked as a teacher/administrator for twenty years in Durham, North Carolina. The family-his wife, Cynthia, two daughters, and a son, accompanied him to new jobs in Salisbury and Sanford. Upon retirement in 2006, he began consulting work which allows him time for writing. Now, the family divides their time between home in Winston-Salem and summers on an island retreat in Northern Ontario.

Accompanied by the author's striking line drawings, each chapter in Natural Histories showcases a particular animal or plant and each narrative begins or ends in, or passes through the Tennessee Valley. Along the way, historical episodes both familiar and obscure-the de Soto explorations, the saga of the Lost State of Franklin, the devastation of the Trail of Tears, and the planting of a "Moon Tree" at Sycamore Shoals in Elizabethton-are brought vividly to life. Bales also highlights the work of present-day environmentalists and scientists such as the dedicated staffers of the Tennessee-based American Eagle Foundation, whose efforts have helped save the endangered raptors and reintroduce them to the wild.

In Clinch River Justice, a boy matures into manhood, falls in love, and begins to find his way in life. As an inexperienced but idealistic deputy sheriff, this young man, Charley Scott, faces a rash of deaths in a normally idyllic, peaceful Appalachian community in the early 1940s. These deaths of neighbors and a beloved family member result when greed, passion, jealousy, hopelessness, or utter disdain for the life or welfare of another human overcomes some residents’ sense of fi delity and of right and wrong. In the young deputy’s endeavors to apprehend killers and in his quest for justice, he learns how difficult that simple concept is to achieve.

A timely study of change in a complex environment, Where There Are Mountains explores the relationship between human inhabitants of the southern Appalachians and their environment. Incorporating a wide variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the study draws information from several viewpoints and spans more than four hundred years of geological, ecological, anthropological, and historical development in the Appalachian region. The book begins with a description of the indigenous Mississippian culture in 1500 and ends with the destructive effects of industrial logging and dam building during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Donald Edward Davis discusses the degradation of the southern Appalachians on a number of levels, from the general effects of settlement and industry to the extinction of the American chestnut due to blight and logging in the early 1900s. This portrait of environmental destruction is echoed by the human struggle to survive in one of our nation's poorest areas. The farming, livestock raising, dam building, and pearl and logging industries that have gradually destroyed this region have also been the livelihood of the Appalachian people. The author explores the sometimes conflicting needs of humans and nature in the mountains while presenting impressive and comprehensive research on the increasingly threatened environment of the southern Appalachians.

The roadside historical markers of East Tennessee highlight the fascinating personalities and significant events of a culturally and historically rich region. Forthree years, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Fred Brown presented the storiesbehind the local markers placed by the Tennessee Historical Commission. He searchedthe highways and back roads of East Tennessee, tracking down markers with directionsthat were sometimes no more specific than ?Highway 11, Greene County.'Arranged by county, the entries link East Tennessee's past and present and highlightthe enormous diversity of the state's history from its prehistoric past through its involvement in World War II. The markers detail bitter struggles with Native Americans in the eighteenth century, but also explain the unique contribution of Cherokee culture and civilization, such as Sequoyah's development of the Cherokee syllabary. Brown commemorates the numerous Civil War sites throughout the region, but he also includes the service of East Tennesseans in later wars. One marker commemorates Kiffin Yates Rockwell, a founding pilot of the Lafayete Escadrille, a famed squadron of aviators in World War I. Another marker details the achievements of Sgt. Elbert L. Kinser of Greene County, who was posthumously decorated for his leadership of a First Marine Division Rifle Platoon on Okinawa.The markers also showcase East Tennessee's unique political history. They tell thestory of the ?lost state? of Franklin in the 1780s and record the region's efforts to secede from the state when Tennessee left the Union in 1861. Brown's narrative also explains the nature of opposing political factions throughout the decades through the biographies of their leaders, such as Elihu Embree, a Quaker abolitionist who founded an antislavery paper in East Tennessee.From the vantage of the armchair or out on the road, Marking Time is a surprisingand engaging trip on the byways of East Tennessee's politics, culture, and history through the stories of the men and women who shaped the state.