Book cover of The Ozarks: An American Survival of Primitive Society

Book description

Vance Randolph was perfectly constituted for his role as the chronicler of Ozark folkways. As a self-described "hack writer," he was as much a figure of the margins as his chosen subjects, even as his essentially romantic identification with the region he first visited as the vacationing child of mainstream…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Ozarks as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It is doubtful that anyone has been more associated with an American region than Vance Randolph is with the Ozarks. Ornery and darkly romantic, Randolph was always attracted to people on the margins. Few were more marginal than the Ozarkers in the early twentieth century. While we must take a lot of Randolph’s “nonfiction” with a dose of salt, The Ozarks, originally published in 1931, was the first book-length documentary take on the region and its people. It set the stage for generations of Ozarks observations to come. 

From Brooks' list on the Ozarks.

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