Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways, the latest book by New York Times best-selling author, former U. S. senator and Georgia governor Zell Miller, is about a way of life that once was, but is no more. Time has taken its toll on much of the unique Appalachian mountain culture. Only a remnant now remains.
"Purt nigh gone" (pretty near gone) is the region's disappearing dialect, swallowed up by exposure to mass media popular culture. Nearly gone as well is the area's traditional music, its food, its old-time religion, its humor, and even its moonshine.
While considering these fading treasures, this book also looks at the Appalachian mountains in their prehistoric times, when they rose higher than the Rockies, at the Cherokees and their removal, at the nation's first gold rush, and at the timeless question of whose mountains these truly are.
Finally, Zell Miller leaves us with 101 good reasons for living in these mountains today.