Book Reviews

Coal River

by Michael Schnayerson
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008

$25, 306 pages

The battle for West Virginia is in full swing. In their quest for coal, companies level mountains, raze forests, buy elections, and bully residents. Community activists want clean water, a safe place to call home, and protections for the land where they and their families have lived for generations. Regulators in Charleston and Washington, DC, bend rules and look the other way to allow the destruction. Politicians peddle influence, and lawyers on both sides fight in heated, dramatic court battles.

Michael Schnayerson writes in Coal River the story of the fight of coal versus community. The CEO of Massey Energy, the biggest proponent of mountaintop removal coal mining, throws big money at defeating judges, unions, and community opposition. Local activists organize protests, confront injustice and challenge a governmental regulation program that has been pilfered by coal company cronies. The lawsuits brought against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and other agencies are central characters as much as any of the people filing motions, offering campaign contributions, or carrying picket signs. Coal River is about mountaintop removal, the history of coal in West Virginia and the ongoing battle to save the purple mountains majesty that are the Appalachians. --Jared Saylor

Purchase Coal River here

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