Appalachian wilderness: the great Smoky Mountains

Eliot Porter

Dutton, 1970 - Fiction - 123 pages

Here is a majestic portrait of the Appalachians -- from the wonders of its natural beauty to its fascinating history. In 48 Full-color Photographs of veiled mountains, lush woodlands, rushing highland streams, and fields of dazzling wildflowers, Eliot Porter captures the extraordinary beauty of the Smoky Mountains and the surrounding wilderness. Edward Abbey's text, filled with the sensitive insights and idiosyncratic perspective that characterize all his works, explores the human history of Appalachia, describing the native Cherokees and the mountaineers who followed them. In a moving epilogue, Harry Caudill discusses the lives of the mountain people today.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - EvalineAuerbach - LibraryThing

Noted photographer Porter's photos are shadowed by Edward Abbey's human history: industrial tourism and the harsh fate of the Cherokee Indians, sensitively told. For a complete collection of either ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - carrieprice78 - LibraryThing

A delicious and visually-delightful book put together by Ed Abbey and the amazing photographer Eliot Porter. Abbey's musings on Appalachia were quite hilarious, but also quite sad at times as he ...

Contents

• Appalachian Pictures: 13
• Appalachian Rock: 28
• Appalachian People: 65

About the author

Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Home. After military service in Naples, Italy, from 1945-47, he enrolled in Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a year before traveling to the West. He fell in love with the desert Southwest and eventually attended the University of New Mexico, where he obtained both graduate and post-graduate degrees. Abbey was a Fulbright Fellow from 1951-52. Abbey was an anarchist and a radical environmentalist; these positions are reflected in his writings. His novel Fire on the Mountain won the Western Heritage Award for Best Novel in 1963. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, considered by many to be his best work, is nonfiction that reflects Abbey's love for the American Southwest and draws on his experiences as a park ranger. Among his best-known works are The Brave Cowboy (1956), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and The Fool's Progress (1988). In 1966 The Brave Cowboy was made into a movie titled Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. Two collections of essays have been published since his death in 1989: Confessions of a Barbarian in 1994 and The Serpents of Paradise the following year. In 1987, Abbey was offered the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, but he declined. Abbey died in March 1989, near Tucson, Arizona, from complications following surgery. He did not want a traditional burial but rather requested to be buried in the Arizona desert, where he could nourish the earth which had been the subject of so many of his works.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Appalachian wilderness: the great Smoky Mountains
• Author: Eliot Porter
• Contributors: Eliot Porter, Edward Abbey
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Dutton, 1970
• Original from: Indiana University
• Digitized: Sep 8, 2008
• Length: 123 pages
• Subjects: Appalachian Mountains; Fiction / General; Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Agency.); Great Smoky Mountains National Park (N.C. and Tenn.); Photography / Subjects & Themes / General; Travel / United States / General; Travel / United States / South / General; Travel / United States / South / South Atlantic