Twilight in Hazard

An Appalachian Reckoning

By: Alan Maimon

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

When Alan Maimon got the assignment in 2000 to report on life in rural Eastern Kentucky, his editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal told him to cover the region "like a foreign correspondent would."

And indeed, when Maimon arrived in Hazard, Kentucky, fresh off a reporting stint for the New York Times's Berlin bureau, he felt every bit the outsider. He had landed in a place in the vice grip of ecological devastation and a corporate-made opioid epidemic - a place where vote-buying and drug-motivated political assassinations were the order of the day.

While reporting on the intense religious allegiances, the bitter, bare-knuckled political rivalries, and the faltering attempts to emerge from a century-long coal-based economy, Maimon learns that everything - and nothing - you have heard about the region is true. And far from being a foreign place, it is a region whose generations-long struggles are driven by quintessentially American forces.

Resisting the easy cliches, Maimon's Twilight in Hazard gives us a profound understanding of the region from his years of careful reporting.

©2021 Alan Maimon (P)2021 Tantor

Fascinating

Fascinating, eye opening, sad, heart-warming and at times funny. Written by a master storyteller.

A view of the region, with a desire to learn and understand.

If you get a chance to read or listen to this book, by all mean, do.
It is a wonderful outside/inside perspective on East Kentucky, particularly the Hazard area.

Written by a Pulitzer Prize nominated reporter, who spent 20-years living in Hazard, KY and is married to a local hazard woman- this book gives an in depth look into the region.

Unlike J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”, the author does not claim to be a “Hillbilly”.
Although, Vance never lived in Kentucky and this Author did; Maimon viewed his time in the region as though he were a foreigner correspondent in another country, attempting to understand and learn from its people, not make assumptions about them.
It’s quite enjoyable.

So left wing

Basic democratic campaign slogan. Very left wing and judgmental. I was raised in hazard and the author twisted and turned reality

Off track after chapter 4

Tells a very myopic version of life in south eastern Kentucky for the first four chapters. After chapter 4 rambles on with clear political bias and goes off topic.

If you’re going to report, get to know the people. Not smart, who hired this guy?

It’s enunciated ‘Apple shop, like an apple, meaning to be be clever and play on the word Appalachia. If you were a good reporter or writer, you would have known that. You were probably scared of the people there and stayed in your hotel room. People in Eastern Kentucky are forgotten lives. This is badly written and does not do justice to the communities. A very poor depiction of poor people trying to survive. Did you go in a holler and meet real country folk? I know you didn’t and that’s ok because you can’t change something you don’t understand.

Don’t waste your time

I had high hopes for this book…. I was excited to hear from someone who I understood had firsthand knowledge and firsthand long term life experience of a beautiful part of my beloved state to which many Kentuckians are not exposed. Unfortunately, the “journalist” who was “reporting” on the social and political climate of the area, was so clouded by his own personal far left leaning bias that I chose not to finish the book. The book is a tragedy for the area that so needs an unbiased perspective to help garner the attention of the rest of the proud citizens of this great Commonwealth. The commitment of the Appalachians to the traditions of our country’s forefathers should be a challenge to all Americans who love God and Country.