Dan Pierce is a professor of history at UNCA. “Corn from a Jar,” is due to be published in June 2013 by Great Smoky Mountains Association, a non-profit that supports Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The book chronicles both the historical roots and Scotch-Irish ancestry of moonshine in addition to the lives of notorious Smoky Mountain moonshiners like Lewis Redmond and Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton from Maggie Valley, NC.
 
“For me the story of moonshine is a story of how people of little, and often worsening, means tried to find ways to cope with the difficulties of life,” Pierce said. “For many individuals and families, making moonshine, for at least part of their lives, was a logical act.”