American History Books by Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.

The idea of "regional history" leads directly to the unspoken thesis of this book, and that is that there is, in fact, a region. This region has been arbitrarily broken up into states and counties and histories have been written about these largely historically inappropriate entities. Only one regional history has been written, and that was published in 1903 and ended its regional narrative with the year 1786 (History of Southwest Virginia and Washington County by Lewis P. Summers). The region in question roughly includes the territory defined by lines drawn from Abington, Virginia to Elizabethton to Rogersville to Cumberland Gap to Pound Gap and back to Abington. It was recognized as a unit by the pioneers, and by the Boom Era industrial developers, and is so today by its residents.