More Mountain Spirits

from the foreword:
After the publication of my first book on The Decline and Fall of Corn Whiskey as a Fine Art—otherwise known as Mountain Spirits, and sometimes by its subtitle, A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America's Appalachians—I ran into scores of people who had even greater tales to tell me about this fading era of Americana. Their grandpoppas and poppas and uncles had experiences that would fill another book, they said, giving truth to the saying that you couldn't walk a mile along almost any "branch" in the Southeastern hill country without coming across the ruins of a still. It appeared to me that perhaps it would be worthwhile to retrace some of my steps through the north Georgia Appalachians to ferret out these stories and so I did just that. The project proved to be a delightful excursion and I got to meet a number of additional personalities who shared with me their experiences. When you add these to the scores of characters I had interviewed in researching Mountain Spirits, it became apparent once again that the spirits story was not an isolated or parochial one, but hte saga of a sub-culture extending throughout an entire region.