About the Author

Journalist and author Rudy Abramson was a Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times for more than twenty-five years, during which time he served as national science correspondent, Pentagon correspondent, and White House correspondent. His major assignments included the U.S. space program, arms control policy, national political campaigns, the Watergate investigation, and environmental issues.Abramson is the author of Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman and Hallowed Ground: Preserving America's Heritage. He has written for Smithsonian Magazine, Audubon Magazine, Astronautics and Aeronautics Magazine, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the New York Times Book Review, and Appalachia.A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Abramson attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as a Sloan-Rockefeller Fellow in Advanced Science Writing. He has also received a Mary and Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship and an Alicia Patterson Fellowship. He is a native of Florence, Alabama.Jean Haskell retired as director and professor in the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University. She is author of The Appalachian Photographs of Earl Palmer, co-editor of Performance, Culture, and Identity, and numerous other publications on Appalachian issues.Haskell has served in several capacities that promote Appalachian interests: as John D. Whisman Scholar with the Appalachian Regional Commission, Visiting Scholar with the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, cultural resource advisor to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the board of directors of the Appalachian Consortium, Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, as past president of the Appalachian Studies Association, and as curator of the Appalachian program for the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.Haskell holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently resides in Portsmouth, Virginia, where she is vice-president of Commodore Associates, Inc., owners and operators of the historic Commodore Theatre.