About the Author

JEFF GOODELL is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith. Goodell's memoir, Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family, was a New York Times Notable Book.

Reviews

Goodell, in this well-written, timely and powerful book, makes it crystal clear what the stakes are The New York Times Fiery and committed The New York Times Book Review The hidden truth about coal is what Jeff Goodell is after in his groundbreaking book.
Bookpage [Goodell] turns the light on the coal industry as he tracks the black rock on a bracing, eye-opening journey.
Audubon Big Coal gives its readers a clear sense of the tradeoffs we face in our feverish quest for inexpensive energy... The Washington Post Goodell has a talent for pithy argument - and the book fairly crackles with informed conviction.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Eye-opening and provocative Kirkus Reviews, Starred Goodell does a first-rate job of balancing environmental concerns with interviews from the human faces associated with "Big Coal" Library Journal --

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) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.