Big Coal

Starred review from April 10, 2006
After a generation out of the spotlight, coal has reasserted its centrality: the United States "burn 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.