Coal

Duane Lockard's Coal is at once a historical account of mining - the explosions, slate falls, black lung, and floodsand a memoir of one family's involvement in it. Four generations of his family have worked in the mines, including Lockard himself, and his book interweaves family letters and diaries with firsthand interviews and literature on the industry to evoke a century's worth of mining and coal town life. Entwined in the personal story of this coal miner's son who became a Princeton political scientist is Lockard's critique of how the coal industry has behaved as a corporate citizen and how it exemplifies corporate power in American life.

First sentence: IN THE SPRING OF 1941 when I was nineteen I pestered the superintendent of the mine where my father worked as a coal loader until he finally let me satisfy a curiosity I had harbored as far back as my memory could reach-to find out what it was like to work inside a coal mine.

Year

1998

Language

English

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Editions

1

Pages

225

ISBN

9780813917849

Data source: Wikidata