Bragg, Rick. All Over but the Shoutin'. Vintage, 1997. The autobiography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who grew up poor and white in northeastern Alabama.

Brown, Margaret Lynn. The Wild East: A biography of the Great Smoky Mountains. University Press of Florida, 2000. An opinionated history of the Smokies, concentrating on the natural history. Very readable.

Crowther, H. Cathedrals of Kudzu: A personal landscape of the south. Louisiana State University, 2000. Essays on the modern South which explains a lot that you did not know to ask.

Dykeman, Wilma. The French Broad. Henry Holt, 1955. The history and culture of the people of Western North Carolina. Another classic by Wilma Dykeman who is credited for pioneering the field of Appalachia Studies.

Ellis, Jerry. Marching through Georgia: My walk along Sherman's route. University of Georgia, 2002. Ellis walks from Atlanta to Savannah and meets a lot of Southerners along the way.

Ellis, Jerry. Walking the Trail: One man's journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Dell Publishing, 1991. A Cherokee journalist walks from Oklahoma back to his home in Alabama, creating the Trail of Tears. Well-written, personal account.

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic. Vintage Books. 1998. Horwitz travels to all the Confederate Civil War sites and tracks down the folks who are still into the war. Very funny.

Kephart, H. Our Southern Highlanders. University of Tennessee Press, 1984. This book, first published in 1913, is historical, sociological and autobiographical. It concentrates on the Appalachian people and the author's interaction with them.

Pierce, D. The Great Smokies: From natural habitat to national park. University of Tennessee Press, 2000. This is the book to start with if you want to learn about the history of the Smokies. The book discusses the human history of the park. I took a course from Dr. Pierce at the University of North Carolina in Asheville. The best!

Ray, Janisse. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Milkweed editions. 1999. Growing up in rural Georgia.

Whistnant, Anne Mitchell. Super-scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway history. University of North Carolina Press, 2007. A very readable book about the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway from a Ph.D. dissertation.