This is a little book published by an entity called "America Through Time" which is an imprint of Arcadia Publishing. On their website, they described "America Through Time" as "a local and regional interest series that showcases the history and
heritage of communities around the country. Using modern color
photographs juxtaposed with old images, these titles capture a strong
sense of the past while demonstrating the force of change through the
passage of years".
Arcadia Publishing is a company which publishes books primarily about communities across the country which are primarily collections of photographs assembled by individuals or groups in those communities who feel the need to preserve some of their local history. I have read and written about one other book on this blog which that company published, "Images of America Floyd County" by Lisa Perry and the Wheelwright Historical Society. It is a much better book than this one by Christina Paster. It is my impression that Arcadia Publishing is essentially a vanity press which specializes in books about specific geographical settings, does little or no editorial work with the individuals and groups producing the books, and is simply in the business of making money from individuals and groups who are incapable of producing high quality work. But let us get back to the book in question about the abandoned coal towns of West Virginia.
The photographs compose probably 75% to 90% of the content of this book. The book is broken into brief chapters about each of the eleven towns the author visited and photographed for the book. There is a generally brief introduction to each chapter which is usually less than a full page with two exceptions, the discussion of Wheeling and Moundsville which I suspect are either the towns closest to the author's home or the towns she knows best. The text is of very poor quality and shows absolutely no editorial supervision. It is rife with grammatical errors of every type: incomplete sentences; sentence fragments; run on sentences; misspellings; errors in grammar, syntax, and tense. It is very poor quality writing. The photographs are marginally well done, bordering on the low end of professional level. None of the photographs are particularly striking and a reasonably talented photographer could duplicate or better them with a low cost, hand held digital camera. There are less than a half dozen mildly historical photographs included in the book with appropriate source crediting. The author has also appended a brief section of end notes to support the few statements she has used from the work of others. For those of you who have ties to or interest in one or more of the abandoned coal towns of West Virginia, I am adding a list of the eleven towns portrayed in the book so you can decide if you are interested enough to seek a copy for your inspection and, hopefully, your pleasure. The town are Pocahontas, Whitesville, Itmann, Thurman, McDowell, Mullens, Alderson, Wheeling, Moundsville, Matoaka, and Nuttallburg. If you have an interest, I would suggest that you attempt to locate a copy of the book in a library near you, inspect it, and then decide if you want to spend the money to buy a personal copy. I do not want to induce you to feel you wasted your money on this particular book. For my own personal and academic interests, the best book I have found about abandoned coal towns in general is "A Guide To Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley" by George D. Torok, which also covers a few of the coal towns of West Virginia despite its primary Eastern Kentucky focus. It is well worth the money. I can also recommend "Coal Camp Kids Coming Up Hard And Making It" by Barbara Ford Ritchie and published by Father and Son Publishing which has since been bought up by a larger company which continues to sell some of their titles. But that book can be difficult to locate except a rare copy on used book websites. On the Father and Son website it is listed at $75.00 which is a bit much for most people.
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