HESS PUBLISHES HISTORY OF LMU

April 14, 2011 - Harrogate, Tennessee — The University of Tennessee Press has published Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) Associate History Professor Earl Hess’ latest work, an engaging history of the University entitled Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia (UT Press, $45). The meticulously researched and richly illustrated volume is now available.

Located in the heart of Appalachia near where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia converge at the Cumberland Gap, LMU was founded in 1897 with the mission to serve underserved and disadvantaged youth in the region and reward the descendents of Union loyalists. Its founder was former Union General Oliver Otis Howard, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, who made it his mission to sustain an institution of higher learning in the mountain South that would honor the memory of the Civil War president.

Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia is more than a chronology of past events. Hess uses the institution’s history to look at wider issues in Appalachian scholarship, including race and the modernization of educational methods in Appalachia. The University has played an important role in shaping what higher learning could be for young people in its region of southern Appalachia.

Published as the University celebrates the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the volume examines the involvement of Howard and his unflagging efforts to establish and fund the school; the influence of early twentieth-century industrial capitalism- Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were benefactors – on Appalachia and LMU in particular; and the turn-of-the-century cult of Lincoln that made the university a major repository of Lincolniana.

Hess holds the Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at LMU, where he has taught since 1989. Hess has been a student of Civil War history since he was a teenager, growing up in rural Missouri. He completed his B.A. and M.A. degrees in history at Southeast Missouri State University. His Ph.D. in American Studies, with a concentration in history, was awarded by Purdue University in 1986. He has taught at a number of institutions, including the University of Georgia, Texas Tech University, and the University of Arkansas. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Civil War military history, the latest of which is Into the Crater – The Mine Attack at Petersburg. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

Lincoln Memorial University and the Shaping of Appalachia is available online through www.utpress.org and at the LMU Bookstore.

Lincoln Memorial University is a values-based learning community dedicated to providing educational experiences in the liberal arts and professional studies. The main campus is located in Harrogate, Tennessee. For more information about the undergraduate and graduate programs available at LMU, contact the Office of Admissions at 423-869-6280 or e-mail at admissions@lmunet.edu.

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