Shelter from the Machine: Homesteaders in the Age of Capitalism by Jason G. Strange

Homesteaders - not survivalists, not commune dwellers, not really farmers, not simply rural people. More like “back-to-the-land” folks, but including “never left the land folks.” because it considers the two main distinct kinds of homesteaders – “hippies” and “hicks.”  At the beginning of his Introduction, Jason Strange defines a homestead as “a piece of land on which people grow food and build a home and otherwise provide for some of their own needs.” And why would a book about those folks – especially one that is based on a U.C. Berkeley dissertation – make its way into a list of books about Appalachia? Well, for starters, before the author lived as a homesteader while a young adult, he lived as a homesteader as a kid in Eastern Kentucky. More importantly, most of the quotations and the information in this book is gleamed from residents of places south and east of Berea, Kentucky. To protect the innocent and guilty and to make the book less confusing and cumbersome, these places are