Publisher's Weekly Review
After a generation out of the spotlight, coal has reasserted its centrality: the United States "burn[s] more than a billion tons" per year, and since 9/11 and the Iraq war, independence from foreign oil has become positively patriotic. Rolling Stone contributing editor Goodell's last book, the bestselling Our Story, was about a mine accident, which clearly made a deep impression on him. Our reliance on coal-the unspoken foundation of our "information" economy-has, Goodell says, led to an "empire of denial" that blocks us from the investments necessary to find alternative energy sources that could eventually save us from fossil fuel. Goodell's description of the mining-related deaths, the widespread health consequences of burning coal and the impact on our planet's increasingly fragile ecosystem make for compelling reading, but such commonplace facts are not what lift this book out of the ordinary. That distinction belongs to Goodell's fieldwork, which takes him to Atlanta, West Virginia, Wyoming, China and beyond-though he also has a fine grasp of the less tangible niceties of the industry. Goodell understands how mines, corporate boardrooms, commodity markets and legislative chambers interrelate to induce a national inertia. Goodell has a talent for pithy argument-and the book fairly crackles with informed conviction. (June 8) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Viewing the political and economic heft of the American coal industry, journalist Goodell presents an admiring view of the workers who mine, transport, and burn coal and an adversarial posture toward the CEOs, lobbyists, and politicians who monitor industry interests. In the background of the author's narratives, which are pegged to his visits to coalfields, coal-hauling trains, and power plants, lurks environmental pollution. Goodell injects relevant statistics (e.g., on average, an American uses 20 pounds of coal in a lifetime) that effectively personalize the reader's connection to an industry most ignore until a power outage. He astutely recognizes and heavily criticizes how mining companies and utilities capitalize on this disconnection in their public relations. Disputing their assertions that standards of living will suffer from the host of regulations and treaties he favors, Goodell particularizes his objections in detail useful to those who closely follow environmental issues. The circulation numbers of a comparable critique of the fossil fuels complex, Boiling Point, by Ross Gelbspan (2004), may predict Goodell's appeal to library patrons. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist
Choice Review
This book is a primer on all aspects of the coal business, from geology to technology to politics, and an excellent introduction for the general reader. Goodell, a skilled writer but not a technical specialist, offers much food for thought to those unfamiliar with the critical role coal plays in satiating America's voracious appetite for energy. Since coal is the favored alternative to maintain or expand our current level of energy consumption in the future, a critical look at the technology and societal impacts of coal use is very timely. The topic is a big one, but the book succeeds by dividing it into three areas: "The Dig" (how coal is mined and moved on a huge scale and the many risks to the people and land involved), "The Burn" (how coal combustion generates electricity, a historical review of its key role in developing America's "gospel of consumption," and the additional health risks involved), and "The Heat" (how such a carbon-intensive fuel may trigger abrupt climate change, and how coal companies use their political muscle to keep increasing its use). References are given via reasonably comprehensive footnotes. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates; two-year technical program students. B. M. Simonson Oberlin College
Kirkus Review
Energy crisis? What energy crisis? Didn't President Bush say, "Do you realize we have 250 million years of coal?" Rolling Stone and New York Times Magazine writer Goodell gently corrects the ever-misspoken politico: "He meant, of course, 250 years' worth of coal." Whereas gas and oil production seems to be peaking, America is in no danger of running out of high-quality coal anytime soon, though some of our now-abundant supplies in places like Wyoming and West Virginia will get a little harder to extract as seams nearer the surface are consumed. Around the earth there are, Goodell writes, an estimated 1 trillion tons of recoverable coal, which makes it a comparatively abundant fossil fuel, and, all things considered, an inexpensive one at that. And that spells trouble. America burns plenty of coal--half of the electrical power delivered to Los Angeles, for instance, comes from coal-burning plants elsewhere in the Southwest--though with enough environmental controls to make the process relatively clean, certainly as compared to China, whose cities are coated in sulfurous, foul-smelling, mercury-laden ash. Yet the U.S. burns three times the amount of coal that China does, and coal turns out to be a major cause of global warming. What Goodell calls Big Coal has any number of highly paid executives whose job it is to argue away such facts, while efforts to improve safety and ecological problems are dismissed as the mischief of "bureaucrats, regulators, union organizers, and environmentalists" bent on keeping honest Americans--and honest Chinese, for that matter--from earning a living. Big Coal, he adds, delivered West Virginia to George Bush, and it has been well repaid in relaxed restrictions, some of which have lead to the deaths of miners. Goodell is right to say that the coal economy is little documented and not well understood, but his book makes a welcome corrective. Eye-opening and provocative. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
The author of the best-selling Our Story, about nine miners caught underground, begs to differ with President Bush's assertion that coal is the way to go. Tragically relevant; with a six-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
