Situated between the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Southern Illinois country is rich in history, folklore, scenery, and natural resources. At about the latitude of southern Virginia, and extending from the flat prairie farmland of central Illinois to the rugged Illinois Ozarks, the area is the natural terminal boundary for hundreds of plant species reaching out to all points of the compass. It is also the oldest and most sparsely populated part of Illinois, a region of small towns and independent people.
Surveying the area in words and pictures, the authors sensitively and...

The coal mining photographs of C. William Horrell, taken across the southern Illinois Coal Belt over a twenty-year period from 1966 to 1986, are extraordinary examples of documentary photography-so stark and striking that captions seem superfluous. Horrell's photographs, reproduced in fine duotone lithography, capture the varied phenomena of twentieth-century coal mining technology.