At the time it was written in 1962, Night Comes to the Cumberlands framed an urgent appeal to the American conscience. Today it details Appalachia's difficult past, and at the same time presents an accurate historical backdrop for a contemporary understanding of the Appalachian region that author Henry M .Caudill loved so dearly and served so well. His biography of the Cumberland Plateau begins in the violence of the Indian wars and ends in the economic despair of the 1950s and 1960s. Two hundred years ago, the area was a land of great promise. Its deep, twisting valleys contained rich bottomlands; the mountainsides teeming with game produced valuable timber. The people who came into this land scratched out a living by farming, hunting, and making all the things they needed, including whiskey. The Civil War ravaged their land, leaving in its wake a legacy of hate which erupted into the great Kentucky mountain feuds and continued in the "Moonshine Wars" of the Prohibition Era. 404 pages.
