"Scathing exposé of the coal industry." --The New York Times Book Review On April 5, 2010, an explosion ripped through Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, killing twenty-nine coal miners. This tragedy was the deadliest mine disaster in the United States in forty years—a disaster that never should have happened. These deaths were rooted in the cynical corporate culture of Massey and its notorious former CEO Don Blankenship, and were part of an endless cycle of poverty, exploitation, and environmental abuse that has dominated the Appalachian coalfields since coal was first discovered there. And the cycle continues unabated as coal companies bury the most insidious dangers deep underground, all in search of higher profits, and hide the true costs from regulators, unions, and investors alike. But the disaster at Upper Big Branch goes beyond the coalfields of West Virginia. It casts a global shadow, calling into bitter question why coal miners in the United States are sacrificed to erect cities on the other side of the world, why the coal wars have been allowed to rage, polarizing the country, and how the world's voracious appetite for energy is satisfied at such horrendous cost. With Thunder on the Mountain, Peter A. Galuszka pieces together the true story of greed and negligence behind the tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine, and in doing so he has created a devastating portrait of an entire industry that exposes the coal-black motivations that led to the death of twenty-nine miners and fuel the ongoing war for the world's energy future.

Ninety-nine men entered the cold, dark tunnels of the Consolidation Coal Company's No.9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, on November 20, 1968. Some were worried about the condition of the mine. It had too much coal dust, too much methane gas. They knew that either one could cause an explosion. What they did not know was that someone had intentionally disabled a safety alarm on one of the mine's ventilation fans. That was a death sentence for most of the crew. The fan failed that morning, but the alarm did not sound. The lack of fresh air allowed methane gas to build up in the tunnels. A few moments before 5:30 a.m., the No.9 blew up. Some men died where they stood. Others lived but suffocated in the toxic fumes that filled the mine. Only 21 men escaped from the mountain. No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster explains how such a thing could happen--how the coal company and federal and state officials failed to protect the 78 men who died in the mountain. Based on public records and interviews with those who worked in the mine, No.9 describes the conditions underground before and after the disaster and the legal struggles of the miners' widows to gain justice and transform coal mine safety legislation.

Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis—not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. At the same time, critics on the right disparage an excessively strict and costly regulatory system for hampering economic recovery. With such polarized accounts of regulation and its performance, the nation needs now more than ever the kind of dispassionate, rigorous scholarship found in this book. With chapters written by some of the nation's foremost economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, Regulatory Breakdown brings clarity to the heated debate over regulation by dissecting the disparate causes of the current crisis as well as analyzing promising solutions to what ails the U.S. regulatory system. This volume shows policymakers, researchers, and the public why they need to question conventional wisdom about regulation—whether from the left or the right—and demonstrates the value of undertaking systematic analysis before adopting policy reforms in the wake of disaster.

Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so. For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk. Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, “both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it” (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Monongah, West Virginia mine disaster, the West Virginia University Press is honored to carry Davitt McAteer's definitive history of the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. "Monongah" documents the events that led to the explosion, which claimed hundreds of lives on the morning of December 6, 1907. Nearly thirty years of exhaustive research have led McAteer to the conclusion that close to 500 men and boys--many of them immigrants--lost their lives that day, leaving hundreds of women widowed and more than one thousand children orphaned. McAteer delves deeply into the personalities, economic forces, and social landscape of the mining communities of north central West Virginia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tragedy at Monongah led to a greater awareness of industrial working conditions, and ultimately to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which Davitt McAteer helped to enact.