Jeff Biggers

Resistance

Reclaiming an American Tradition

This "powerful, urgent" narrative history of resistance campaigns throughout history and how they affect today's battles (Jeff Chang, author of We Gon’ Be Alright)––from the American Revolution and the defeat of fascism during WWII, to landmark battles for civil rights and the new movements for equity.

Across cities, towns, and campuses, Americans are grappling with overwhelming challenges and the daily fallout from the most authoritarian White House policies in recent memory.

In this inspiring narrative history, Jeff Biggers reframes today’s battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition. Resistance is a chronicle of the courageous resistance movements that have insured the benchmarks of our democracy––movements that served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and landmark civil rights and environmental protection achievements.

Legendary historian Studs Terkel praised Biggers’s The United States of Appalachia as a "how–to book" in the tradition of the American Revolution. With Resistance, Biggers opens a new window into American history and its meaning today. In a recovery of unsung heroes, including Revolutionary forefather Thomas Paine, Resistance is a provocative reconsideration of the American Revolution, bringing alive the early struggles of Indigenous peoples and people of color, and immigration, women’s rights, and environmental justice movements. With lucidity, meticulousness, and wit, Biggers unfolds one of our country’s best–kept secrets: in dealing with the most challenging issues of every generation, resistance to duplicitous civil authority has defined our quintessential American story.

"Resist we must, resist we will––and as this volume powerfully reminds us, in so doing we are acting on the deepest American instincts." ―Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

The United States of Appalachia

How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America

Few places in the United States confound and fascinate Americans like Appalachia, yet no other area has been so markedly mischaracterized by the mass media. Stereotypes of hillbillies and rednecks repeatedly appear in representations of the region, but few, if any, of its many heroes, visionaries, or innovators are ever referenced.

Make no mistake, they are legion: from Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, to Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer who invented the first syllabary in modern times, and international divas Nina Simone and Bessie Smith, as well as writers Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, and Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Appalachia has contributed mightily to American culture — and politics. Not only did eastern Tennessee boast the country's first antislavery newspaper, Appalachians also established the first District of Washington as a bold counterpoint to British rule. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers reminds us how Appalachians have defined and shaped the United States we know today.