The Watches of the Night (Inscribed First Edition, First Printing)

Caudill, Harry M.

ISBN 10: 0316132187 / ISBN 13: 9780316132183

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press - Little Brown, 1978

About this Item

Inscribed First Edition, First Printing of Harry M. Caudill's portrait of life and rural poverty in the Cumberland plateau region fifteen years after his revelatory classic, "Night Comes to Cumberlands." Inscribed by Harry M. Caudill to a previous owner on a page at front. Cloth, 275 pages. Has foxing on the page edges. The dust jacket is price clipped and has edge wear including a chip on the front cover.

Seller Inventory # 015367

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Watches of the Night (Inscribed First Edition, First Printing)
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press - Little Brown
• Publication Date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316132187
• ISBN 13: 9780316132183
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

In 1963, Harry M. Caudill published his now classic account of the reckless, deliberate despoliation of the Appalachian Plateau, "Night Comes to the Cumberlands." Thirteen years later, in "The Watches of the Night," Caudill continued the heartbreaking story of an incredibly rich land inhabited by a grindingly poor people whose problems, despite state and local aid and an unprecedented boom in coal, had worsened: the land was being stripped more rapidly than ever; the people's traditional relationship with the land was being uprooted, and their old customs eliminated by standardization. Both a narrative history and a polemic against greed and waste, "The Watches of the Night" hammers at "the profligacy growing out of the persistent myth of superabundance." The author ponders an even darker future if the cycle of boom and bust is not broken. He writes: "Americans have never understood or respected the finely textured, little-hill terrain of the Cumberland Plateau." Neither the farmers nor the miners who followed the early pioneers saw it as a place to cherish. Through decades that have lengthened to nearly two centuries the land has fought back, sometimes with savage floods and always with persistent efforts to reforest. "But now time runs out and our 'inexhaustible' resources have turned finite....The Kentucky Cumberlands are many things, but most of all they are are a warning.