If you are wondering how one of the greatest strikes in recent history came out of a place we were told was a “Trump County” backwater then read this. This slender book packs quite a punch. Elizabeth Catte takes us on a tour of an Appalachia much more diverse, radical and conflicted than the one we hear about from corporate sources. Appalachia is no more “Trump Country” than is Long Island New York.

The author takes Vance’s famous *Hillbilly Elegy* to task for promoting a racial explanation of Appalachian poverty. Catte’s arguments are completely in keeping with what Nell Painter presents in History of White People: poor Appalachians are cast as broken people from dysfunctional families and damaged blood lines. That conveniently leaves out the role of corporate exploitation and resources extraction. And it hides behind a real history of eugenics and sterilization of mountain folk.

Class and corporate exploitation is made to disappear behind a “culture of poverty” argument also used against blacks, natives and other people. Just as important Catte shows us the hidden history and current resistance of local people against the corporations that dispose of their health — sometimes their lives — and destroy the water, mountains and air of Appalachia. No wonder Standing Rock was so strongly supported in Appalachian communities.