Winner of the 2010 Kentucky Archives Month Certificate of Merit for Writing or Other Production.
This work will do much to fill what I believe is a real vacuum in twentieth-century Appalachian historiography. Tom Kiffmeyer tells a gripping, human story.
~Chad Berry, author of Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles
Thoroughly researched, well-written, and judicious in tone, the enduring contribution of Reformers to Radicals is in delineating the limits of liberal reformism in a region like Central Appalachia where inequality is so entrenched that only a thorough political restructuring will bring about democratic change.
~Ronald L. Lewis, Robbins Chair and Professor Emeritus, West Virginia University
Kiffmeyer deepens our understanding of Appalachia's history during the 1960s, when the region was on the front line of the War on Poverty. His succinct, dynamic account of the Appalachian Volunteers highlights the multilayered, powerful challenges facing antipoverty warriors both within and outside the mountains and reveals yet another dimension of the unanticipated consequences of liberal reform during a tumultuous era in American history.
~John Mathew Glenn, author of Highlander: No Ordinary School
Reformers to Radicals provides a compelling case study of the political and social tensions that enveloped the United States in the 1960s. Kiffmeyer places AVs' story into the national narrative of a radical, oppositional consciousness emerging out of the idealism of the civil rights movement and the Great Society.
~Rob Weise, associate professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University
This work will do much to fill what I believe is a real vacuum in twentieth-century Appalachian historiography. Kiffmeyer tells a gripping, human story.
~Chad Berry, Appalachian Heritage
His succinct, dynamic account of the Appalachian Volunteers highlights the multilayered, powerful challenges facing antipoverty warriors, both within and outside the mountains, and reveals yet another dimension of the unanticipated consequences of liberal reform during a tumultuous era in American history.
~John Matthew Glenn, Appalachian Heritage
As a detailed overview of a critically important but under-examined chapter in Appalachian history, Reformers to Radicals is a welcome contribution to the scholarship.
~Chad Montrie, North Carolina Historical Review
The treatment of the clash of cultures the War on Poverty brought to the mountains is the strongest aspect of the book Kiffmeyer does a nice job fitting the story into the context of the sixties.
~William Clayson, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Kiffmeyer blames [the failure of the Appalachian Volunteers] on its paternalistic outsider mentality, which alienated every group the AV worked with, and the power of local elites. Recommended.
~Choice
Reformers to Radicals provides a valuable contribution to Appalachian and American historiography. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding modern Appalachia's struggle with indigence or the War on Poverty's inability to provide solid and lasting solutions for such a persistent and pervasive problem.
~Jinny Turman-Deal, contributor to West Virginia History: An Open Access Reader
Reading this book, one is gripped by a sense of tragedy... Well researched and vigorously written, this book provides great insights into why the War on Poverty failed.
~Journal of American History
Both timely and long overdue...Reformers to Radicals is an impressive accomplishment documenting the history of the Appalachian Volunteers.
~Appalachian Journal
Ashmore and Kiffmeyer offer a powerful indictment of the operation of the War on Poverty on the ground, contribute to an understanding of public policy issues, and, in Ashmore's case, add to our knowledge of the civil rights movement after its glory years.
~American Historical Review
Reformers to Radicals address the many factors that led to the demise of the Appalachian Volunteers in 1970, the most important being the massive repression by local, state, and national political leaders.
~Journal of Southern History
This well reasoned and meticulously documented work of scholarship should prove useful to southern historians, students of the Great Society era, and anyone interested in the dynamics of social reform movements.
~The Southeastern Librarian
