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Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal

Amazon.com Price:  $16.27 (as of 08/05/2019 17:32 PST- Details)

Description

“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 once the deadliest mine disaster in the US in forty years―a disaster that never must have happened. These deaths were rooted in the cynical corporate culture of Massey and its notorious former CEO Don Blankenship, and were a part of an endless cycle of poverty, exploitation, and environmental abuse that has dominated the Appalachian coalfields since coal was once first came upon there. And the cycle continues unabated as coal companies bury the most insidious dangers deep underground, all on the lookout for higher profits, and hide the real 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 US 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 real story of greed and negligence at the back of the tragedy on the Upper Big Branch Mine, and in doing so he has created a devastating portrait of a complete 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.

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