James Branscome’s Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux — A Comprehensive Reckoning with Appalachia and the Nation

Appalachia's Struggle Against America's Institutions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 15, 2026

Contact: James Branscome

jbranx@outlook.com

June 6 launch from Appalachian Press Books updates contemporary scholarship on the region and how America’s institutions have shaped it across five decades

James Branscome’s Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux: Appalachia’s Struggle Against America’s Institutions releases June 6, 2026. The Kindle edition is available for pre-order now at $9.99:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYWQSPKM

A paperback edition through IngramSpark will follow on Amazon at a higher list price once the physical proof is approved and the catalog updated.

The book brings thirty-seven chapters of investigative journalism to bear on the institutions — federal, corporate, media, and cultural — that have shaped the Appalachian region and the nation’s relationship to it. Branscome treats Appalachia as a whole, from the Blue Ridge through the coalfields to the broader 423-county region defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, examining the forces that have produced its conditions and the forces now reshaping it.

Branscome, a native of Carroll County, Virginia, and a 1968 graduate of Berea College, served on the staff of the Appalachian Regional Commission from 1969 to 1971 before a five-decade career in journalism that ran in parallel with senior leadership roles at McGraw-Hill Publications Company and Standard & Poor’s. His byline has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, American Heritage, Business Week, Southern Exposure, the Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg, Kentucky (where he has contributed since 1973), the Daily Yonder, Cardinal News, the Kentucky Lantern, West Virginia Watch, and dozens of other regional and national publications.

About the Book

Half a century before Hillbilly Elegy put the wrong story in front of millions of readers, James Branscome was already telling the right one — and he has spent the years since documenting what has changed and what has not.

Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux is a contemporary reckoning with the Appalachian region and the institutions that have shaped it. The book updates current scholarship on the region’s economic, political, demographic, and cultural conditions, drawing on Branscome’s recent reporting alongside reprints of foundational documents from his earlier career.

The book’s thirty-seven chapters address the mythologies that have justified exploitation — from John Fox Jr. through The Beverly Hillbillies to J.D. Vance — and the structural forces that have given those mythologies their working purpose.

It examines the Tennessee Valley Authority’s transformation from New Deal idealist to a major consumer of strip-mined coal, the Appalachian Regional Commission’s structural underinvestment over six decades, the demographic changes reshaping the region (including the depopulation of the coalfields, the diverging trajectories of northern and southern Appalachia, and the substantial growth of Latino populations across the region), the federal government’s record in Appalachia from the War on Poverty forward, and the data-center industrial complex now establishing itself across multiple Appalachian states.

Recent chapters draw on Branscome’s 2025 and 2026 reporting for the Daily Yonder, Cardinal News, the Kentucky Lantern, West Virginia Watch, and his Substack. Earlier chapters reprint foundational documents — the original 1971 Annihilating the Hillbilly manifesto, the 1973 Southern Exposure essay Paradise Lost on TVA strip-mining, and the 1977 Field Foundation report The Federal Government in Appalachia — allowing readers to trace a single argument across five decades.

Unlike many critiques of Appalachian conditions, the book moves beyond diagnosis to propose a serious policy framework: an Ascend Central Appalachia talent-attraction program, a contemporary Appalachian Homestead Act for redistributing land held by absentee corporations, and a time-limited Universal Basic Income experiment scaled to the region.

Advance Praise for Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux

“No other journalist has covered the Appalachian odyssey for as long and with as much insight as James Branscome. From the War on Poverty to the current population crisis this native son cuts through national stereotypes and popular elegies to reveal the human tragedies of mountain life. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Appalachia’s past and current struggles.”

— Ronald D. Eller, author of Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 and Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers

“My college days I would roll out of bed on hungover Saturday mornings to be part of the Save Our Kentucky meetings Jim led. We’d talk about strip mining, organizing, and how to stand up for Appalachia. Bold talk. I would also find my way to the library to read Jim’s dispatches in the Mountain Eagle. I took his Annihilating the Hillbilly to heart. Today his essays on restoring Appalachia after the pillagers have done their worst are a master class in cultural investment. And in optimism. It is a big deal for a kid like Jim with only ninth grade economics from Hillsville High to become a managing director at Standard and Poor’s. A bigger deal is that he did not forget where he came from.”

— Dee Davis, founder, Center for Rural Strategies; publisher, The Daily Yonder; former Appalshop executive producer

“James Branscome’s writing brings clarity to the complex history and challenges of his native Appalachia.”

— Jamie Lucke, retired founding editor-in-chief, Kentucky Lantern, and longtime opinion writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader

“From Appalachian migration to hog castration, this book contains the wisdom (and humor) of a lifetime. Jim Branscome has been a guide, teacher and prophet for all of us who want to better know the eastern mountains.”

— Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort and co-founder of The Daily Yonder

“As young people coming up in the 1970s, Jim Branscome’s investigative reporting opened our eyes to the systemic challenges facing Appalachia, while also instilling pride in being from this place. Branscome’s essential writing has informed the creative work of Appalshop for over 50 years. With this book, new generations will benefit from what he taught so many of us.”

— Mimi Pickering, filmmaker and radio producer, Appalshop

“Appalachia is America’s least understood major region. It has been the object of much journalism, but usually for specific purposes of the writers or their paymasters. Jim Branscome has a deep knowledge of it, a firm independence, and an understanding of how the world works — and what it has done to Appalachia, and its unrealized potential.”

— Al Cross, founding director, Institute for Rural Journalism, and professor emeritus, University of Kentucky

“I have spent much of my own life studying and interpreting Appalachian communities, and I can say without hesitation that Jim Branscome has written an extraordinary book. Jim inspired the anthology I worked on almost 50 years ago, Blacks in Appalachia. This long-awaited book is honest, humane, deeply informed, and profoundly moving. Readers will come away with a fuller understanding not only of Appalachia, but of America itself.”

— William H. Turner, author of The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns, winner of the Appalachian Studies Association Book of the Year for Nonfiction (2021) and the Zora Neale Hurston Award (2025)

“He has told a story the ‘established press’ has, to its shame, neglected to tell. Concisely and forcefully he has traced the history and development of federal efforts to ease Appalachian poverty and political weakness. Branscome combines the zeal of a true believer with the methodology of a trained social scientist. His report merits the most serious consideration by all who are concerned with the future of the region. Jim Branscome knows the Southern Appalachians as few do.”

— Harry M. Caudill, author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, from his foreword to the 1977 Field Foundation report

Availability

Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux: Appalachia’s Struggle Against America’s Institutions

Published by Appalachian Press Books

ISBN: 979-8-9959320-0-0 (paperback) / 979-8-9959320-1-7 (eBook)

Kindle pre-order ($9.99) — releases June 6, 2026:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYWQSPKM

Paperback edition through IngramSpark will be available on Amazon at a higher list price following the June 6 launch. The paperback will also be available to college and university bookstores, libraries, and course-adoption programs through standard wholesale terms.

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