They Say in Harlan County is the culmination of more than thirty-five years of interaction between one of the most influential writers about oral history and memory and the people of one of the nation's most colorful and notorious communities. An aficionado of “The Peculiarities of Oral History” (the title of one of his seminal articles), here Alessandro Portelli sets out to “paint a huge canvas,” with much of the meaning “in the gaps and in the silences, to be extracted or filled in by the readers’ cooperation” (pp. 9, 11). This is a poignant work at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences that subtly and skillfully weaves together dozens of individual narratives, with the author's authoritative voice used only sparingly and often in the endnotes rather than the main text.

One might divide the work roughly into four thematic sections following a chronological arc from white conquest of Kentucky in the late eighteenth century, through the rise of extractive industries, and then the Appalachian crisis of poverty and out-migration in the middle and late twentieth century. Following a brief introduction, the narrative begins with “Creation Stories” and carries the conversation through the issues of family structure, inter-personal conflict, and religion that figure most prominently in the cultural attitudes and shared memories of the region's inhabitants. The story then moves to the process of industrialization and the sale of timber and mineral rights, which amounted to a “second fall, a loss of the original birthright to the land” (93). Chapters on identity formation at home, in the community, and in the mines allow for a nuanced interpretation of the bloody mine wars of the 1920s and 1930s commemorated in folk music and literature. The book's last portion is perhaps its most important contribution to the historical literature, since it brings the story of Harlan, and by extension the rest of Appalachia and the United States, up to the present. In the final chapter, Portelli turns to the contemporary issues of drugs, teenage pregnancy, educational challenges, and overseas conflicts in order to understand the way historical memory, both in its presence and absence, continues to shape the experiences of local residents.

Taking the form of what the author likens to quilting, this is not a text that conforms to the normal academic chapter structure. Portelli clearly sympathizes with those characters most closely associated with democratic and union viewpoints, but he lets no view go uncontested. That said, important voices and counter-voices, such as those of mine owners, “scabs,” deputized “gun thugs,” and others essential to balancing an overly romanticized narrative may appear when least expected, though seldom arbitrarily. The main argument about the ways in which the harshness of the landscape crafted a culture focused on “Staying Alive” is similarly subtle. The book has a few editorial blemishes including the failure to list several interviewees in an otherwise well-conceived list of contributors that is essential for fully interpreting the story. I think readers unfamiliar with the area would have appreciated also a better map of Harlan County as well as more images.