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Coal, Industry, Labor, Railroads, Transportation
Includes lumber, iron & steel, oil & gas, hydraulic fracturing (fracking), automobile, chemical, hydroelectric, nuclear, glass, textile, livestock, mining, and tourist trade Industries; labor unions and strikes; highways, canals and river transportation
Achenbach, Joel. 2014. “Gaps are Wide in Chemical Testing, Regulation ” [Elk River, W. Va.]. Washington Post, 20 January, 4(A). 1,207 words, plus photo gallery, map graphics, and link to Eastman Safety Data Sheet. January 9th chemical spill leaves 300,000 without water. http://wpo.st/Phen1.
Adams, Sean P. 2014. The American Coal Industry, 1790-1902. 3 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto. Volume 1. Coal and the nation, 1790-1835 -- Volume 2. Making coal a household name, 1835-1875 -- Volume 3. King Coal’s uneasy throne in America, 1870-1902.
Alterman, Eric, and Reed Richardson. 2014. “Let Them Drink Coke: The Media’s Indifference to the West Virginia Chemical Spill” [Jan. 9; Elk River]. The Nation, 14 January. 2,587 words. http://www.thenation.com/blog/177914/let-them-drink-coke-medias-indifference-west-virginia-chemical-spill.
Appalachian Industry. 2013. Special issue, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 1-72. Essays, poems, and human interest stories about the virtues, experiences, and effects of “industry” on the region.
Arnold, Andrew Bernard. 2014. Fueling the Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in Pennsylvania Coal Country. New York: New York University Press. 277 pp. Contents: Part I, HUBRIS. Cultural: Coal Mining and Community, 1872 | Formal: The Right to Strike, 1875 | Secret: Regional Leadership Networks, 1875-1882. Part II, HUMILITY. Compromise: The Great Upheaval in Coal, 1886. Part III, STALEMATE. Origins: New Organizational Forms, 1886-1890 | Association: Organization and Industry, 1890-1894 | National Scale: A Living Wage for Capital and for Labor, 1895-1902. Conclusion: Failures of Order in the Gilded Age.
Bahde, Thomas. 2015. “‘I Would Not Have a White Upon the Premises’: The Ohio Valley Salt Industry and Slave Hiring in Illinois, 1780-1825.” Ohio Valley History 15, no. 2 (Summer): 49-69. Maps, illustrations.
Baker, Patrick R. 2013. “Managed Cooperation in a Post-Sago Mine Disaster World.” Pace Law Review 33, no. 2 (Spring): 491-535. http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1829&context=plr.
Barkey, Fred. 2016. “‘Blair Mountain changed my life!’: Reflections on the 1921 Armed Miners’ March.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 42, no. 1 (Spring): 56-63. The author tells of the leading role played by his father-in-law, Charlie Holstein, in the Battle of Blair Mountain during the West Virginia Mine Wars.
Batch, Rachel A. 2015. “A Labored Mid-Atlantic Region Defined, Not Discovered: Suggestions on the Intersections of Labor and Regional History.” Pennsylvania History 82, no. 3 (Summer): 329-342. The author “suggests that a Mid-Atlantic labor identity might be found in the ‘drama and debris’ of the Great Strike of 1877 and during deindustrialization in the 1970s.”
Beamer, Glenn. 2016. The Steelworkers’ Retirement Security System: A Worker-Based Model for Community Investment. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press. 137 pp. Case studies of Weirton, W. Va.; Bethlehem, Pa.; and Johnstown, Pa.
Beard, Chuck. 2013-2014. Abandoned Pittsburgh. Portraits of the Steel City’s Forgotten Past, Vols. 1-3. Pittsburgh: Beowulf’s Books. 90 pp. “...a photographic project seeking to document the forgotten places...from derelict steel mills and empty warehouses to rusted bridges and decayed churches. Sites include Duquesne Steel Works, St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church, LaSalle Electric Supply Co., and the Carrie Furnace Hot Metal Bridge.”
Begos, Kevin, and Michael Rubinkam. 2014. “Online List IDs Water Wells Harmed by Drilling” [http://bit.ly/1lyMfGG]. Washington Times, 28 August. 562 words. “Six years into a natural gas boom, Pennsylvania has for the first time released details of 243 cases in which companies prospecting for oil or gas were found by state regulators to have contaminated private drinking water wells.” http://go.shr.lc/2axsDj3.
Bell, Shannon Elizabeth. 2016. Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia. Urban and Industrial Environments series. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Contents: Contextualizing the case: Central Appalachia | Micro-level processes and social movement participation | The depletion of social capital in coalfield communities | Identity and environmental justice movement participation | Cognitive liberation and coal industry ideology | Cognitive liberation and hidden destruction in central Appalachia | Photovoice in five coalfield communities | Becoming, and un-becoming, an activist.
Berkes, Howard, and others. 2014. “Delinquent Mines.” NPR Special Series [Investigative series of stories on coal mine safety violations and delinquent fines]. NPR Radio. Stories: Fines Don’t Appear to Deter Mine Safety Violations (November 16, 2014) | Billionaire Spent Millions in Charity, but Avoided Mine Fines [Jim Justice, a West Virginia philanthropist and mine owner] (November 15, 2014) | Former CEO Indicted for Alleged Role in Deadly Mine Disaster [Don Blankenship ran the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia where a blast killed 29 in 2010] (November 13, 2014) | Miners at Risk because of Unpaid and Uncollected Fines (November 13, 2014) | Top Delinquent Mine Has Deadly Legacy (November 13, 2014) | Coal Mines Keep Operating despite Injuries, Violations and Millions in Fines [Aracoma Alma coal mine in Logan County, W. Va.] (November 12, 2014). http://www.npr.org/series/363761319/delinquent-mines.
Berkes, Howard. 2010-2014. “Mine Safety in America: Coverage of Mine Safety and What Led to a Blast That Killed 29 in West Virgina” [Upper Big Branch mine, 2010]. NPR Special Series. NPR Radio. Dozens of stories and podcasts. http://www.npr.org/series/131960177/massey-mine-investigation.
Biello, David. 2014. “How Dangerous Is the Coal-Washing Chemical Spilled in West Virginia?” Scientific American, 10 January. 1,082 words. A chemical spill in the Elk River from a Freedom Industries storage tank contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people in nine counties. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-dangerous-is-the-chemical-spilled-in-west-virginia.
Biggers, Jeff. 2015. “Mountaintop Removal Mining Is a Crime against Appalachia.” Al Jazeera America, 7 April. 924 words. “It’s time for Obama and for Congress to recognize the indubitable scientific data on the mounting health damages...and enact a moratorium...through the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act.” “Obama’s budget proposal last month for an effective Appalachian regeneration fund opened a door to the future for ailing coal mining communities. The Power Plus Plan supports reclamation and reforestation projects, job training and transition programs for unemployed coal miners, as well as pension plans for retired miners. http://alj.am/1PdDTQb.
Black, Brian C., Ann Norton Greene, and Marcy Ladson. 2015. “Energy in Pennsylvania History.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 139, no. 3 (October): 249-64. Review essay of a several books that contribute to a history of the state’s energy landscape, primarily focusing on oil, coal, and gas, but also considering early patterns of water, timber, and animal power, as well as consequent pollution and climate change.
Blinder, Alan. 2016. “Donald Blankenship Sentenced to a Year in Prison in Mine Safety Case.” New York Times, 6 April, 12(A). 1,199 words. Massey Energy’s 2010 Upper Big Branch, W. Va., mine explosion killed 29 men. http://nyti.ms/23bUeyd.
Butko, Brian. 2014. “Heinz: Much More than 57 Varieties.” Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 3 (Fall): 20-33. History of the food manufacturer from Henry J. Heinz’s 1850s beginnings.
Byrd, Travis Sutton. 2015. Unraveled: Labor Strife and Carolina Folk During the Marion Textile Strikes of 1929. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 335 pp. “...the southern textile belt--from the rayon mills of upper East Tennessee to the bleacheries and weave rooms of the Carolina piedmont--exploded in a full-on civil war.”
Carlat, Louis, and Daniel Weeks. 2015. “‘New and Untried Hands’: Thomas Edison’s Electrification of Pennsylvania Towns, 1883-85.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 139, no. 3 (October): 293-321. Examines Edison’s attempts to establish small scale village plant systems in anthracite towns (Northumberland and Luzerne counties) and elsewhere in early phases of electrificaton outside New York.
Carpenter, Zoë. 2014. “How the Obama Administration Is Keeping Big Coal Alive.” The Nation, 7 July. 734 words. http://www.thenation.com/blog/180549/how-obama-administration-keeping-big-coal-alive. “...while the Obama administration is taking steps to discourage coal consumption at home, it is tacitly promoting coal exports overseas.”
Chandra, Shailesh, and Sharada Vadali. 2014. “Evaluating Accessibility Impacts of the Proposed America 2050 High-Speed Rail Corridor for the Appalachian Region.” Journal of Transport Geography 37 (May): 28-46. “...for 23 counties in the Appalachian Region....that are proximate to five HSR stations (Birmingham, Atlanta, Greenville, Charlotte, and Greensboro)...for potential accessibility changes between the years 2002 to 2035.”
Chen, Michelle. 2016. “Just Because Big Coal Is Collapsing Doesn’t Mean Appalachia Has to Follow: Is an Environmentally Sustainable Economic Transition Possible?” The Nation, 4 May. 1,035 words. Alternative energy sources; KFTC; Peabody Coal’s collapse; Miners Protection Act. http://www.thenation.com/article/rescuing-appalachia-from-coals-demise/.
Chew, Megan. 2016. “From Places Between to Industrialized Countryside: Creating Enriched Uranium and Coal-Fired Energy in the Ohio Valley in the Early Cold War Era, 1952–65” [Pike Co.]. Ohio History 123, no. 1 (Spring): 26-50. “...the progress under way around these new plants did not remake southern Ohio in northeastern Ohio’s image, and it did not erase the area’s social or economic issues or its rural image.”
Chitwood, Michael. 2013. “Independence Day.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 19. Special issue, “Appalachian Industry.” “The week of July 4 was the week of the summer in the small town where I grew up. The furniture factory and the textile mill shut down .... But for me during my college years, this week was a week of work, and the job I did was strange and lonely and, well, a little frightening” [servicing the mill’s big cooling fans].
Churella, Albert J. 2013. The Pennsylvania Railroad. Vol. 1. Building an Empire, 1846-1917. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 972 pp. “At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world.”
Cohen, Bob. 2013. A Trip by Rail in the Shenandoah Valley on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the Southern Railway [100 images and 9 maps]. [No location]: Outer Station Project. 162 pp. “From Brunswick to Harper’s Ferry on the mainline, and then...to Lexington, VA, via Strasburg and Harrisonburg. Each station and its community is included with a basic history along with individual passenger station data.”
Collins, George. 2013. “Magnvox’s Vision for America: A Pictorial History” [1924-1975]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 50-55. Audio, radio, television.
Collins, George. 2013. “‘Why Not Greeneville?’: Magnavox Comes to Appalachia” [Tenn.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 47-49, with sidebar, “The Sound of History.”
Conlogue, William. 2013. Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania’s Working Landscapes [Lackawanna and Pike Co.]. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 230 pp. “Essays exploring the social, economic, and environmental elements of the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania.”
Corbin, David. [1981] 2015. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. 2nd ed. West Virginia and Appalachia Series, no. 16. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 328 pp. Originally published: Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Corkery, Michael. 2016. “Banks Pull Back on Funding Coal.” New York Times, 21 March, 1(A). 1,408 words. “While coal has been declining over the last several years, Wall Street’s broad retreat is an ominous sign for the industry.” http://nyti.ms/1XG1nQq.
Davenport, Coral, and Ashley Southall. 2014. “Critics Say Chemical Spill Highlights Lax West Virginia Regulations.” New York Times, 13 January, 8(A). 1,229 words. A major chemical spill into the Elk River on January 9th cut off water to more than 300,000 people in nine counties. “West Virginia has a pattern of resisting federal oversight and what they consider E.P.A. interference .... Historically, there had been a questionable enforcement ethic.” http://nyti.ms/1cblwo8.
Day, James Sanders. 2013. Diamonds in the Rough: A History of Alabama’s Cahaba Coal Field [Bibb, Shelby, Jefferson counties]. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 209 pp. Contents: Discovering and Marketing Coal: 1815-1859 | Mining and Mapping Coal: 1859-1883 | Surveying and Developing the Field: 1883-1910 | Coal Towns: 1881-1919 | Convict Leasing: 1872-1927 | Welfare Capitalism: 1915-1933 | Unionism: 1878-1935 | Decline and Demise: 1929-1976.
Denison, Richard. 2014. “‘Epic Fail’ in West Virginia Chemical Spill: Poor Information, Poor Communications, Poor Decisions” [Jan. 9; Elk River]. EDF Health (blog), 26 January. 2,233 words. Environmental Defense Fund. “Accepting at face value the chemical manufacturer’s own interpretation and conclusions...is a huge breach of the public’s trust.” http://blogs.edf.org/health/2014/01/26/epic-fail-in-west-virginia-chemical-spill-poor-information-poor-communications-poor-decisions/#sthash.y7V1DJEy.dpuf.
Dieterich-Ward, Allen. 2016. Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America [tri-state area: Pa., Oh., W. Va.]. Politics and Culture in Modern America series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 347 pp. Explores “the diverse ways residents of an iconic industrial region sought places for themselves within a new economic order” after the manufacturing collapse of the 1980s. “...integrates the urban core with its regional hinterland of satellite cities, white-collar suburbs, mill towns, an rural mining areas.”
Dixon, Thomas W. 2013. Chesapeake & Ohio Passenger Service, 1847-1971. Clifton Forge, Va.: Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. 224 pp. “Chronological text supplemented with maps, diagrams, charts, tables, timetable reproductions, ads, menus, as well as photos.”
Downs, Matthew L. 2014. Transforming the South: Federal Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1915-1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 331 pp. Muscle Shoals and Huntsville, Ala., focus.
Dredge, Bart. 2014. “David Clark’s ‘Campaign of Enlightenment’: Child Labor and the Farmers’ States Rights League, 1911-1940” [textile industry]. North Carolina Historical Review 91, no. 1 (January): 30-62.
Duke University. 2016. “Central Appalachia Flatter Due to Mountaintop Mining: Changes Could Mean More Pollutants in the Region’s Water.” ScienceDaily, 5 February. 602 words. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160205134955.htm.
Eckman, Paul E., and Karen Hechler. 2013. Around Connellsville [Fayette Co., Pa.]. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia. 127 pp. Known as the “coke capital of the world,” the book includes vintage photos of “coke ovens, coal patches, railroads, streetcars,” and “a diverse ethnic population.”
Editorial Board. 2015. “The Coal Baron on Trial in Appalachia.” New York Times, 30 October, 26(A). 421 words. “His mantra of profits above all else is at the core of the current criminal trial of Mr. [Don] Blankenship on charges of conspiring to violate health and safety laws, and scheming to foil mine investigators in connection with the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal miners more than five years ago in Raleigh County, W. Va.”
Editorial Board. 2015. “The Dirty Work of a Coal Baron Exposed.” New York Times, 8 December, 30(A). 368 words. Don Blankenship faces a possible one year prison sentence. http://nyti.ms/1SLfodh.
Editorial Board. 2016. “How the Coal Industry Flattened the Mountains of Appalachia.” New York Times, 16 February. 517 words. http://nyti.ms/1PYlw36.
Eisenberg, Ann M. 2016. “Beyond Science and Hysteria: Reality and Perceptions of Environmental Justice Concerns Surrounding Marcellus and Utica Shale Gas Development.” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 77, no. 2 (Winter): 183-234.
Estep, Bill, and John Cheves. 2013. “Pall of Pain Remains Three Decades after Mine Blast Killed 8 on Potato Branch” [Dec. 7, 1981, Adkins Coal Co. No. 18, Topmost, Ky., Knott County]. Lexington Herald-Leader, 7 July. 4,230 words, plus video clips. http://www.kentucky.com/2013/07/06/2705174/more-than-400-kentucky-miners.html#.
Estep, Bill. 2016. “Coal Jobs in Kentucky Fall to Lowest Level in 118 Years.” Lexington Herald-Leader, 2 May. 1,000 words. http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article75087302.html.
Exploring the West Virginia Coalfields: The People, Places, and Events That Built a Nation. 2013. Oak Hill, W. Va.: National Coal Heritage Area Authority. 26 leaves, unpaged. A heritage tourism guide describing 33 significant places and towns; fold-out maps.
Fears, Darryl. 2014. “As W.Va. Mountaintops Are Removed, Fish Vanish, Study Finds.” Washington Post, 14 July, 4(A). 1,059 words. Guyandotte River; photo; diagram. http://wapo.st/1nuLCMT.
Feeney, Alison E. 2015. “The History of Beer in Pennsylvania and the Current Growth of Craft Breweries.” Pennsylvania Geographer 53, no. 1 (Spring/Summer): 25-43. “Pennsylvania traditionally led the country in the number of breweries but declined by the mid-1900s. This study uses GIS to map the 166 [new] craft breweries.” Seven maps.
Fink, Joey. 2015. “Crystal Lee Sutton: ‘I Was Doing Something I Didn’t Even Think I Could Do’.” In North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2, ed. M. Gillespie and S. McMillen, 354-374. Athens: University of Georgia Press. J. P. Stevens 1973 textile mill strike, and basis for the 1979 movie, Norma Rae.
Fletcher, Rebecca Adkins. 2015. “‘Money Gets Things Done, But Legwork Does Too’: Labor’s (Re)Claiming of Community Space in a Privatized Public.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 21, no. 2 (Fall): 189-206. Describes 2007 Kentucky gubernatorial election; political canvassing; and “efforts to ‘take back’ the annual community Labor Day celebrations...in ways that are in line with ‘new unionism’ tactics.”
Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth A., and Ken Fones-Wolf. 2015. Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie [1946-1955]. Working Class in American History series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 264 pp. “...the CIO needed to achieve breakthroughs...especially in textiles, the industry that presented the greatest challenge to the spread of unionism in the region.” The authors “explore how union officials and sympathizers – as well as those seeking to halt union expansion – used religion to try and win the hearts and minds of southern workers.”
Freese, Barbara. 2015. “How Coal Disrupted the World” [“A short history of black gold -- and its power over us”]. Politico Magazine, 26 May. The Agenda: Future of Power series. 2,900 words; plus photo gallery of 14 images, “When Coal Was King.” http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/how-coal-disrupted-the-world-000004.
Gabriel, Trip, and Coral Davenport. 2014. “Calls for Oversight in West Virginia Went Unheeded” [Elk River chemical spill]. New York Times, January 14. 12(A). 1,049 words.
http://nyti.ms/1cfsrN0.
Gabriel, Trip, Michael Wines, and Carol Davenport. 2014. “Chemical Spill Muddies Picture in a State Wary of Regulations.” New York Times, 19 January, 1(A). 2,167 words. Elk River; 300,000 people left without usable water in a nine-county area surrounding Charleston. http://nyti.ms/1aAc1lZ.
Gabriel, Trip. 2014. “In Compromise Plan, Limited Fracking Is Approved for National Forest in Virginia.” New York Times, 19 November, 13(A). 611 words. “...in a reversal of an earlier proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing throughout the...George Washington National Forest.” http://nyti.ms/1tbxqH6.
Gabriel, Trip. 2014. “Mine Boss Indicted, Coal Country Sees New Era” [Don Blankenship; Massey Energy]. New York Times, 1 December, 1(A). 1,493 words. “Legal experts call the case against Mr. Blankenship, a figure both feared and renowned for his power in West Virginia, a turning point after a century in which the power of coal barons over politicians, courts and the economy protected them.” http://nyti.ms/1tCi92i.
Gabrys, Jennifer (director), and Catherine Pancake (filmmaker). 2016. “Citizen Sense” [fracking consequences]. London: Goldsmiths, University of London. Five multimedia “data stories” about natural gas infrastructure in five towns in northeastern Pa., and “...5 videos documenting ‘Pollution Sensing’ fieldwork, resident concerns, monitoring practices and events .... The 5 videos cover topic areas including: Industrial Countryside, Environmental Exposures, Sensing Practices, Workshops and Walks, and Evidence and Governance.” http://datastories.citizensense.net/.
Galuszka, Peter A. [2012] 2014. Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal. New foreword by Denise Giardina. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 238 pp. Originally published: New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Garner, Dwight. 2015. “A Deep, Dark Fight for Dignity: James Green’s The Devil Is Here in These Hills” [Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014]. New York Times, 29 January. 978 words. Book review of Green’s history of two early 20th-century mine wars, subtitled ‘West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom.’ http://nyti.ms/1zaIf3Z.
Gazarik, Richard. 2014. “Pittsburgh’s Famous Forgotten Radical: ‘I Welcome All Strikes; I Welcome the Feeling of Unrest’.” Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 4 (Winter): 34-43. “Attorney Jacob Margolis was an anarchist, an atheist, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and Pittsburgh’s most prominent radical in the 1920s.”
George, Ed. 2016. “‘Saint Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store’ -- Merle Travis 1946.” Journal of the Alleghenies 52: 74-87, with photos and map. Short history of the abuses of scrip and company stores in Allegany and Garrett Counties, Md., and adjacent Mineral and Grant Counties, W. Va.
Ghabra, Omar. 2014. “How the Coal Industry Impoverishes West Virginia.” The Nation, 24 January. 1,236 words. “The recent chemical spill [Jan. 9, Elk River] is the latest chapter in a very old story: total capitulation to industry by state officials.” http://www.thenation.com/article/178077/how-coal-industry-impoverishes-west-Virginia.
Ghabra, Omar. 2015. “After the Spill: Life in West Virginia’s Coal Country.” The Atlantic, 9 January. 2,772 words. “One year after the Elk River chemical disaster [Jan. 9, 2014], has the Mountain State’s approach to mining changed?” www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/life-in-west-virginias-coal-country/384316/.
Gilley, Jessey. 2014. “The Great Lakes-to-Florida Highway: A Politics of Road Space in 1920s West Virginia and Virginia.” Southeastern Geographer 54, no. 1 (Spring): 6-17. “Southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are often considered remote and isolated, but they were viewed as essential links.”
Gold, Russell. 2014. The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World. New York: Simon & Schuster. 366 pp. The author, an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, “visited frack sites from Texas to North Dakota; and...conducted thousands of interviews with engineers and wildcatters, CEOs and roughnecks, environmentalists and politicians.”
Goldenberg, Suzanne. 2014. “The Anti-Fracking Activist Barred from 312.5 Sq Miles of Pennsylvania” [Susquehanna Co.]. The Guardian, 29 January. 1,586 words, plus video clip (4:21 min.). A court injunction bans Vera Scroggins from stepping foot on any land leased by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/29/vera-scroggins-fracking-activist-pennsylvania.
Grant, H. Roger. 2014. The Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Rail Road: Dreams of Linking North and South[Charleston, S.C.]. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 191 pp. The LC&C’s founding convention was held in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1836.
Green, James R. 2015. The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom[Mine Wars, 1897-1921]. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 440 pp. “On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were 50,000 mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary miners’ angel, Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis verging on civil war that stretched from the creeks and hollows to the courts and the US Senate.”
Grunwald, Michael. 2015. “Inside the War on Coal” [“How Mike Bloomberg, red-state businesses, and a lot of Midwestern lawyers are changing American energy faster than you think”]. Politico Magazine, 26 May. The Agenda: Future of Power series. 7,000 words; photos, maps, charts. “Beyond Coal is the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign in the [Sierra] Club’s 123-year history, and maybe the history of the environmental movement .... it’s helped retire more than one third of America’s coal plants since its launch in 2010.”
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-on-coal-000002.
Hansell, Tom, Patricia Beaver, and Angela Wiley. 2015. “Keep Your Eye Upon the Scale.” Southern Spaces, 19 May. Overview of the embedded short documentary video, “Keep Your Eye Upon the Scale” (13:20 min.), produced by Hansell, Beaver, and Wiley, featuring “previously unpublished footage recorded by Helen Lewis, John Gaventa, and Richard Greatrex as part of their project to document the cultures of Appalachian and Welsh mining communities in the 1970s. Featured performers include Appalachians Rich Kirby and The Strange Creek Singers, as well as Welsh male choir Cor Meibion Onllwyn.” Recommended text, web, and audio resources. http://www.southernspaces.org/2015/keep-your-eye-upon-scale.
Hansen, Evan, Dustin Mulvaney, and Meghan Betcher. 2013. Water Resource Reporting and Water Footprint from Marcellus Shale Development in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Prepared for Earthworks Oil & Gas Accountability Project, Durango, Colo. Final Report, October 30, 2013. Morgantown, W. Va.: Downstream Strategies. 78 pp., plus 19 figures and 38 tables. “On average, in recent years, approximately 5 million gallons of fracturing fluid has been injected per well .... Almost one-half of flowback fluid recovered in West Virginia is transported out ot state .... Potential impacts to West Virginia’s surface waters are most likely to occur from water withdrawals, and not from waste disposal....most water used in Marcellus operations is withdrawn from surface waters.” http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/marcellus_wv_pa.pdf.
Hansen, Evan, and Joseph James. 2015. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline in West Virginia: Opportunities for Public Engagement Regarding Erosion and Sedimentation. Morgantown, W. Va.: Downstream Strategies. 30 pp. http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/atlantic-coast-pipeline.pdf. See also: Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition website (pipelineupdate.org). This report examines the role of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in permitting a 42-inch diameter gas transmission pipeline that would cross mountains and streams in five W. Va. counties before passing into Va. and N.C.
Hansen, Evan, Andrea Varrato, and Jeff Simcoe. 2015. Mountain Maryland Energy Advisory Committee: Final Report, July 13, 2015. Morgantown, W. Va.: Downstream Strategies. 134 pp. “The committee was established to advise the Board of County Commissioners of Garrett County and Allegany County, Maryland on local and state policies, regulations, programs, and legislation to help guide energy planning, with the goal of maximizing likely positive effects and minimizing potentially negative consequences of energy development.” http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/mmeac-report_7-13-15_final.pdf.
Harris, John R. 2014. “Shades of Red.” Natural History 122, no. 4 (May): 34-39. Essay on the environmental damage caused by the former copper mine in Ducktown, Tenn. Edwin Way Teale’s 1951 trip is retraced.
Harris, Wess, ed., comp. 2015. Truth Be Told: Perspectives on The Great West Virginia Mine War, 1890 to Present. Gay, W. Va.: Appalachian Community Services. 200 pp. “This anthology replaces and greatly expands Dead Ringers (2012). Includes much further documentation on Esau scrip, making institutionalized forced sexual servitude a matter that must be included in any discussion of unfettered capitalism.”
Healey, Richard G., William G. Thomas, and Katie Lahman. 2013. “Railroads and Regional Labor Markets in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States: A Case Study of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.” Journal of Historical Geography 41 (July): 13-32. Occupational mobility of railroad workers, 1842-1857.
Hennen, John. 2015. “Toil, Trouble, Transformation: Workers and Unions in Modern Kentucky.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 113, no. 2-3 (Spring-Summer): 233-269.
Hensley, Tim, and Bob Withers, with Ken Miller. 2013. Cass Scenic Railroad: Fifty Years a State Park: A Century of Steam on Bald Knob. Kenova, W. Va.: Pocahontas Productions. 213 pp. History of this central West Virginia, narrow gauge, logging railroad with over 500 photographs.
Hensley, Timothy R., and Kenneth L. Miller. 2015. Norfolk and Western Six-Eleven: 3 Times A Lady. Kenova, W. Va.: Pocahontas Productions. 96 pp. “The allusion in the title is the 611’s first career hauling N&W passenger trains 1950-58; the second career as an excursion engine in the 1980s; and now, her third career as an excursion engine in 2015.”
Herrin, Roberta. 2013. “Idleness and Industry.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 2. Introductory essay to special issue, “Appalachian Industry.” “At an early age, I learned that industry (with a lower-case “i”) was the cornerstone of human worth .... By the nineteenth century, Industry (with a capital “I”) changed the nature of work and the concept of idleness.”
Heyman, Dan, and Richard Pérez-Peña. 2015. “Spilled Oil Keeps Flames Burning After a Train Derailment in West Virginia” [Fayette Co.]. New York Times, 17 February, 10(A). 816 words, plus photos, video clip, map. Baaken crude oil explosion; CSX train. http://nyti.
Hirsch, Susan F., and E. Franklin Dukes. 2014. Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia: Understanding Stakeholders and Change in Environmental Conflict. Studies in Conflict, Justice, and Social Change series. Athens: Ohio University Press. 144 pp.
Huffard, Scott. 2014. “Ghosts, Wreckers, and Rotten Ties: The 1891 Train Wreck at Bostian’s Bridge.” Southern Cultures 20, no. 2 (Summer): 25-39. Statesville, N.C.; Western North Carolina Railroad; capitalism; media attention; lack of regulation.
Humphries, Michael A. 2015. Route of the Cardinal: West Virginia and AMTRAK’s State Bird. Huntington, W. Va.: Collis P. Huntington Railroad Historical Society. 84 pp. Chapters arranged by county segments: Cabell-Wayne; Punam-Kanawha; Fayette; Summers; Greenbrier. Descriptions, images, maps.
Hurt, Alyson. 2015. “Coal, Gas, Nuclear, Hydro? How Your State Generates Power.” NPR News, 10 September. Fifty graphs: “How Each State Generates Electric Power (2004-2014).” “...overall, the country is relying less on coal for power. In 40 states, use of coal as a power source (as a share of all power sources) has dropped since 2004. Many of these states are increasingly relying on natural gas instead.” http://n.pr/SBr6hb.
Inskeep, Steve. 2016. “In Kentucky, the Coal Habit Is Hard to Break” [interview; Webster Co.]. Morning Edition, 12 January. NPR radio. Transcript, 1,110 words; podcast, 7:03 min. http://n.pr/1P4tnr4.
Jolly, Marshall A., and Clint Jones. 2015. “Re-Conceiving the Concept of Stewardship: Coal Production and the Importance of a New Christian Context for Appalachia.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 21, no. 1 (Spring): 33-48. “...we examine the current rhetoric utilized by proponents of coal mining .... especially pertinent in exposing ‘Friends of Coal’ .... By applying [Wendell] Berry’s terminology to this crisis, we contend that instead of understanding the crisis of coal production in terms of efficiency, numbers, quantities, and data, this crisis is better understood in terms of care, character, condition, quality, and kind.”
Jones, Thai. 2014. “Why the Bloodiest Labor Battle in US History Matters Today.” The Nation, 2 April. 2,235 words. “Ludlow Massacre” of striking miners and their families; Colorado; 1914. https://www.thenation.com/article/why-bloodiest-labor-battle-us-history-matters-today/.
Kahan, Paul. 2014. The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American Industry [1892; Pa.]. New York: Routledge. 164 pp. Contents: Carnegie & Frick | American labor history, 1600-1892 | Lead-up to the strike | The lockout & strike | Aftermath | Legacy & conclusion.
Kaiser, John James. 2014. “Clark v. Duke.” Southern Cultures 20, no. 3 (Fall): 123-136. Supreme Court Chief Justice Walter Clark and wealthy industrialist James B. Duke. Examines the history of the Southern Power Company’s monopoly on regional electricity generation.
Kaktins, Uldis, Carrie Davis Todd, Stephanie Wojno, and Neil Coleman. 2013. “Revisiting the Timing and Events Leading to and Causing the Johnstown Flood of 1889” [2,209 deaths]. Pennsylvania History 80, no. 3 (Summer): 335-363.
Kapsch, Robert J. 2013. Over the Alleghenies: Early Canals and Railroads of Pennsylvania. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 376 pp. Contents: 1. Early America and the Coming of the Transportation Revolution | 2. The State of Pennsylvania’s Program of Canals and Railroads (1826-1858) | 3. The Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Canal | 4. The Western Division of the Pennsylvania Canal | 5. The Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal | 6. The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad | 7. The Allegheny Portage Railroad | 8. The Susquehanna, West Branch, and North Branch Divisions | 9. The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal | 10. Pittsburgh to Lake Erie -- The French Creek Division, the Beaver Division, and the Erie Extension | 11. The Gettysburg Extension and the Demise of the State of Pennsylvania's Canals and Railroads. Bibliography. Index.
Keil, Thomas J., and Jacqueline M. Keil. 2015. Anthracite’s Demise and the Post-Coal Economy of North Eastern Pennsylvania [five county area]. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press. 145 pp. Contents: A brief history of northeastern Pennsylvania’s early settlement and development | Bourgeois class formation in the coalfields | Worker rebellion and the problems of worker solidarity | Industrial unionism reemerges in the coalfields | The post-1902 strike era | The demise of anthracite and the rise of a politically organized working class | Subsequent waves of deindustrialization | Conclusions.
Kelley, Lucas P. 2015. “‘The Nobles Enterprise of Modern Times’: Robert Y. Hayne’s 1836 Address to the Knoxville Convention.” Journal of East Tennessee History 87: 93-107. Railroad investment.
Kelly, Mark. 2016. “Carried in Comfortable Coaches.” Western Pennsylvania History 99, no. 1 (Spring): 4-5. Brief article on 19th-century National Road [Rt. 40] and stage coach travel.
Kelly, Susan Croce. 2015. “‘Kentucky Was Ignored Completely’: Governor William J. Fields, the Midland Trail, and the Numbering of Highway 60.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 113, no. 1 (Winter): 3-26. “...in late 1925, when the country’s first national highway system was approved...not a single one was routed through Kentucky.”
Kemp, Emory. 2015. Taming the Muskingum. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 208 pp., with drawings, photographs, and maps. “A tributary of the Ohio River and significant commercial route in the nineteenth century....Kemp’s study ranges from early settlement and navigation...to the state-of-the-art engineering projects undertaken during the New Deal.”
King of Coal [Don Blankenship]. 2016. 60 Minutes, 6 March (CBS TV News broadcast transcript). 2,429 words. By Anderson Cooper, correspondent; Katherine Davis, producer. With video clips of “King of Coal” (14:11 min.); and 60 Minutes Overtime: “Families of Killed Miners Seek Justice” (1:58 min.); “Surviving Miner: ‘I Was Supposed to Be There’” (2:10 min.); “Miner: ‘We Did Speak Up’ For Our Safety” (2:19 min.). “Coal company CEO’s misdemeanor conviction after a disaster that killed 29 miners is a ‘pervesion of justice,’ says victim’s sister.” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-massey-coal-don-blankenship-king-of-coal/.
Knowles, Anne Kelly. 2013. Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 334 pp. Examines ironworks and workers in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Kobus, Ken. 2015. City of Steel: How Pittsburgh Became the World’s Steelmaking Capital during the Carnegie Era. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. 299 pp. Focuses on the [Andrew] Carnegie Steel Company from the 1870s to the early 1900s.
Krauss, Clifford. 2015. “Coal Miners Struggle to Survive in an Industry Battered by Layoffs and Bankruptcy.” New York Times, 17 July. 1,302 words, plus graph (“Falling Demand for Coal”) and video clip (1:28 min.). http://nyti.ms/1LfSE52.
Kunkel, Cathy. 2016. “Organizing During the West Virginia Water Crisis” [Jan. 2014 chemical storage tank spill]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 31, no. 2 (Winter): 36-38. Active citizen involvement; pressure on legislators. “The legislative victory won in the 2014 session was rolled back in 2015, in response to pressure from the oil and gas industry.”
Lackey, Jim. 2015. “From Candles to Carbide: Early Mine Lighting in West Virginia.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 2 (Summer): 10-17. Attached article: “WVU’s Watts Museum,” by Sharon E. Kelly [mining history museum with largest known collection of mining and safety lamps].
Lang, Stephanie M. 2015. “‘Titles Must Be Perfect’: The Broad Form Deed, Politics, and Landownership in Eastern Kentucky at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 113, no. 1 (Winter): 27-57. “...the infamous broad form deed, a document crafted to sever mineral rights from the surface estate and which ultimately allowed investors and businessmen to not only extract resources but influence the economic, legal, and political landscape of the mountains.”
Leamer, Laurence. 2013. The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption [Massey Energy; W. Va.]. New York: Times Books. 432 pp. “A nonfiction legal thriller that traces the 14-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history, Don Blankenship, to justice” in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster (2010; 29 miners killed).
Leamer, Laurence. 2013. “Patricia Sheridan’s Breakfast with Laurence Leamer.” Interview by Patricia Sheridan. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10 June. 1,801 words. http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/breakfast/2013/06/10/Patricia-Sheridan-s-Breakfast-With-Laurence-Leamer/stories/201306100160. Leamer is author of The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption(Times Books, 2013).
Leebrick, Rhiannon A., and James N. Maples. 2015. “Landscape as Arena and Spatial Narrative in the New River Gorge National River’s Coal Camps: A Case Study of the Elverton, West Virginia 1914 Strike.” Southeastern Geographer 55, no. 4 (Winter): 474-494. “Coal hegemony can partly explain the location of coal camps, their temporary nature, and the perpetual spatial narrative that coal camps and towns are, by design, intended to be forgotten. Hence, Elverton is essentially a lost part of the landscape with little chance of being commemorated, even though its story and others like it are quite noteworthy.”
Levitz, Jennifer, Cameron McWhirter and Valerie Bauerlein. 2014. “West Virginia Begins to Lift Water Ban” [major chemical spill, Jan. 9, Elk River]. Wall Street Journal, 14 January. 1,388 words, with map, photos, and video clip (4:41 min.). http://on.wsj.com/1eDrx1N.
Lewis, John. 2013. “Appalachia and Alaska: A Brief Comparative History.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 54-56. “Both are dominated by extractive industries [and]....both experienced similar patterns of economic development.”
Lewis, William. 2016. “Building Commerce: Ohio Valley Shipbuilding during the Era of the Early American Republic.” Ohio Valley History 16, no. 1 (Spring): 24-44.
Lifford, Brad. 2013. “Girls of Atomic City Tells Story of Young Women Who Helped Win World War II” [Oak Ridge, Tenn.]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 7-8. Review essay of book by Denise Kiernan (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Lifford, Brad. 2013. “Former Eastman Researcher Recalls Monumental Days of Scientific Advancement, Secrecy at Oak Ridge [Tenn.; WWII; Manhattan Project]. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 4-6.
Lilly, Jessica, and Roxy Todd. 2015. “Inside Appalachia: Living with Industrial Spills, Floods and Disasters” [podcast]. Inside Appalachia, series. West Virginia Public Broadcasting, 27 February. 53:41 min. Segments include: “Buffalo Creek Disaster Remembered,” [43rd anniversary, Logan Co.], including 11 min. archival interview -- “W. Va. Train Carrying Bakken Crude Oil Derails” [Fayette Co., Feb. 16, 2015, explosion], including 1 min., 7 sec. interview -- “Which Appalachian Waters Rank Among the World’s Best Tasting Water?” [Charleston, W. Va. in 1991, 1993, 1994, ten years before the MCHM chemical spill into the Kanawha River -- “Coal Ash Spill, One Year Later” [Dan River, N.C.; Duke Energy] -- “Remembering Appalachian Activist Judy Bonds” [d. 2012]. http://www.tinyurl.com/l79s9nl.
Lilly, John. 2014. “The Salt Returns: Rebirth of the J.Q. Dickinson Salt Works.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 4 (Winter): 20-23. Seventh-generation salt makers in Malden, Kanawha County, are making gourmet table salt. Attached article: “Great Kanawha Salt Industry,” by John E. Stealey III (pp. 24-25), discusses history of salt industry since 1797 (excerpt from “Great Kanawha Valley Chemical Heritage: Symposium Proceedings”).
Lovan, Dylan. 2015. “No Union Mines Left in Kentucky, Where Labor Wars Once Raged.” Washington Post, 5 September. 481 words. http://wpo.st/nGtZ0.
Ludwig, Mike. 2014. “Massive Coal Ash Spill Chokes North Carolina River as EPA Considers Waste Rules.” Truthout, 6 February. 1,280 words. Duke Energy; Dan River; Eden, Rockingham County; 27 million gallons of contaminated water; “the third-largest coal ash spill in US history.” http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21688-massive-coal-ash-spill-chokes-north-carolina-river-as-epa-considers-waste-rules.
Lyons, Mary E. 2014. The Blue Ridge Tunnel: A Remarkable Engineering Feat in Antebellum Virginia [1858]. Charleston: History Press. 191 pp. The author “follows three Irish families in their struggle to build [Claudius] Crozet’s famed tunnel and their American dream.”
Lyons, Mary E. 2015. The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad. Charleston, S.C.: History Press. 276 pp. Begun 1849; crossing 423 miles toward the Ohio River; built 1850-1860 by hired slaves and Irish immigrant workers; chief engineer was Claudius Crozet.
MacGaffey, Janet. 2013. Coal Dust on Your Feet: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of an Anthracite Mining Town[Shamokin, Pa.; Northumberland Co.]. Stories Of The Susquehanna Valley series. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press. 311 pp. Contents: The coal era -- Historical background and conditions of life in the mining era | Early immigrants: the emergence of ethnic identity and social hierarchy | Eastern and Southern European immigration: ethnicity at its peak | Religion, class and ethnicity | Industrial strife, national and global politics, the decline of ethnicity and religion | The militant heritage of labor and a new industry for the town | Prosperity and decline | Recovering heritage and community | Ethnicity in the twenty first century | Community, sense of place, and changes in economics and politics today.
Maher, Kris. 2014. “Miners Quit Appalachia in Search of New Jobs.” Wall Street Journal, 7 January, 1(B). 534 words. “Coal-mining employment in eastern Kentucky fell to 8,000 workers in June from 11,900 a decade ago....Parts of eastern Kentucky have been in decline for years. Harlan County has about 28,000 residents today, down from 45,000 in the 1980s.”
Maher, Kris. 2016. “Former Massey Energy CEO Sentenced to 12 Months in Prison.” Wall Street Journal, 6 April, 1(A). 953 words. Don Blankenship was convicted in December of conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws. http://on.wsj.com/23bXZE4.
Maples, James N., and Elizabeth A. East. 2013. “Destroying Mountains, Destroying Cemeteries: Historic Mountain Cemeteries in the Coalfields of Boone, Kanawha, and Raleigh Counties, West Virginia.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 19, no. 1-2 (Spring-Fall): 7-26. The authors identify eighteen HMCs and address their damage and destruction due to mountaintop removal mining: “access to cemeteries, depopulation, and lack of legal protection...and offering directions for future research and activism.”
Marley, Ben and Samantha Fox. 2014. “A World-Ecological Perspective on Socio-Ecological Transformation in the Appalachian Coal Industry” [W. Va.; MTR]. Journal of World-Systems Research 20, no. 2 (July): 257-280.
Marley, Benjamin J. 2016. “The Coal Crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian Transformation, Commodity Frontiers and the Geographies of Capital.” Journal of Agrarian Change 16, no. 2 (April): 225-254. “Appalachia’s full-fledged development was an outcome of capital’s under-reproduction strategies.”
Martin, Lou. 2015. Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia. The Working Class in American History series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 239 pp. “Long considered an urban phenomenon...the relocation of steel and pottery factories to Hancock County, West Virginia, created a rural and small-town working class .... [residents] often worked to place limits on union influence. At the same time, this localism allowed workers to adapt to the dictates of industrial capitalism and a continually changing world on their own terms.”
Martin, Richard. 2015. Coal Wars: The Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 271 pp. “...chronicles the dramatic stories behind coal’s big shutdown--and the industry’s desperate attempts to remain a global behemoth.” Contents: PART I. The Death Spiral: The TVA | Kentucky | West Virginia. PART II: The Surge | Wyoming | Colorado. PART III. The Great Migration: Shanghai | Shanxi Province | Hangzhou. PART IV. Ground Zero: Ohio.
Mauk, Ben. 2014. “The Ludlow Massacre Still Matters” [Colo.; April 20, 1914]. New Yorker, 18 April. 1,561 words. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-ludlow-massacre-still-matters.
May, Roger. 2014. “West Virginia Chemical Spill: How Residents Are Coping Three Weeks Later.” The Guardian, 30 January. Portfolio of a dozen narrated photographs documenting effects of Freedom Industries’ Elk River chemical spill which polluted drinking water for more than 300,000. http://gu.com/p/3mb4q/stw.
McAteer, J. Davitt. [2007] 2014. Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Diaster, the Worst Industrial Accident in U.S. History [coal mine explosion; 1907; W. Va.]. 2nd ed., with a new introduction by Robert Reich. West Virginia and Appalachia Series, no. 6. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. “...documents the events which led to the explosion that 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 1,000 children orphaned.”
McChord, Wendell. 2013. Chesapeake & Ohio Coal River District [southern W. Va.]. Clifton Forge, Va.: Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. 96 pp. History, text, maps, photos.
Miller, John W. 2016. “Arch Coal Files for Bankruptcy: Company Seeks To Cut $4.5 Billion in Debt.” Wall Street Journal, 11 January. 974 words, plus graphic charting various energy sources. “Over a quarter of U.S. coal production is now in bankruptcy, trying to reorganize to cope with prices that have fallen 50% since 2011.” http://www.wsj.com/articles/arch-coal-files-for-bankruptcy-1452500976.
Miller, Ralph. 2015. “Melchior J. Miller: Farmer, Distiller” [b. 1833]. Journal of the Alleghenies 51: 3-7. Western Maryland distillery founded 1875; “Melky Miller” bonded whiskey.
Minchin, Timothy J. 2013. Empty Mills: The Fight Against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. 333 pp. Last chapter focuses on deindustrialization in Kannapolis, N.C.
Morrone, Michele, Amy E. Chadwick, and Natalie Kruse. 2015. “A Community Divided: Hydraulic Fracturing in Rural Appalachia.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 21, no. 2 (Fall): 207-228. Tables. Looks at one community; interviews and mail survey.
Murrmann, Mark. 2015. “The Photos That Helped End Child Labor in the United States” (Lewis Hine [1874-1940] sometimes went undercover to capture images of kids at work”). Mother Jones, 3 October. 211 words. Portfolio of 18 sepia tone photos of child laborers in coal mines in W. Va., Pa., Tenn., and Ala. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/10/kids-coal-mines-lewis-hines-photos.
Newhouse, Jack. 2015. “The Northwest Turnpike Revisited.” Journal of the Alleghenies 51: 9-17. Construction of the Northwest (Virginia) Turnpike from Frederick County, Va., to the Ohio River town of Parkersburg, (W.)Va., now Rt. 50, lasted from 1827 to 1837 and was directed by French engineer, Claudius Crozet.
Newkirk, Margaret, Tim Loh, and Mario Parker. 2015. “Coal’s Decline Is Choking Appalachia Towns” [“Mine closures leave towns struggling to keep public services running”]. Bloomberg Businessweek, 10 September. 872 words. http://bloom.bg/1Md6khY.
O’Leary, Sean, and Ted Boettner. 2013. “State of Working West Virginia 2013: From Weirton Steel to Wal-Mart (August 13, 2013).” Charleston: West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. 29 pp. Tables, notes. [annual report since 2008.] http://www.wvpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SWWV2013.pdf. See also, by the same authors: “State of Working West Virginia 2012 — In Depth: The Gas Boom and Coal Bust,” http://www.wvpolicy.org/downloads/SWWV2012_091912.pdf.
Parker, Karen, and Thomas W. Dixon. 2015. Chesapeake & Ohio Allegheny 2-6-6-6 Locomotive: A Retrospective. Clifton Forge, Va.: Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. 128 pp.
Payne, Dale. 2013. A Journey Home: A Historic & Photographic Tour of Southern West Virginia [vintage postcards]. Benton Harbor, Mich: Patterson Printing Co. 178 pp. Covers Fayette, Greenbrier, Kanawha, Mercer, Nicholas, Raleigh, and Summers counties. Special section on “The Early Coalfield Baseball Teams.”
Pianin, Eric. 2014. “Coal Country Toxic Chemical Spills: Not If, But When.” The Fiscal Times, 14 January. 1,373 words, plus video clip. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/14/Coal-Country-Toxic-Chemical-Spills-Not-If-When#.
Planning Ahead By Looking Back [editorial; W. Va.]. 2013. Appalachian Journal 41, no. 1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter2014): 17-18. Reprint of the article, “After the coal is gone,” Charleston Gazette, 25 December 2013.
Plumer, Brad. 2014. “Five Big Questions about the Massive Chemical Spill in West Virginia” [Elk River, Jan. 9]. Washington Post, 21 January. 1,740 words. County outline map. http://wapo.st/1juUb6D.
Przybylek, Leslie. 2014. “Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia.” Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 1 (Spring): 20-39. The steamboat Arabia was built in Brownsville, Pa., on the Monongahela River in 1853 and sank on the Missouri River in 1856. Two hundred tons of its cargo was excavated and recovered beginning in the late 1980s yielding a valuable record of 19th-century material culture.
Purdy, Jedediah. 2014. “No One’s Job: West Virginia’s Forbidden Waters” [Jan. 9 chemical spill; Elk River]. New Yorker, 14 January. 1,220 words. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/no-ones-job-west-virginias-forbidden-waters.
Purdy, Jedediah. 2016. “The Violent Remaking of Appalachia: When Mining a Century’s Worth of Energy Means Ruining a Landscape for Millions of Years” [MTR]. The Atlantic, 21 March. 1,989 words, plus video, “The Horrors of Rat Hole Mining” [India] (12:59 min.). http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/the-violent-remaking-of-appalachia/474603/.
Quiñones, Manuel. 2015. “Coal: Appalachia Starts Long, Scary Slog Beyond Mining.” Greenwire, 17 March. Washington, D.C.: Environment and Energy Publishing (E&E). 2,648 words. Discusses Rural Policy Institute’s and SOAR’s (Shaping Our Appalachian Region) efforts to address unemployment, politics (Republicans’ “war on coal”), and economic development legacies and challenges. http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060015201.
Raymer, Annalisa. 2013. “The Wide Reach of Climate Change: Inupiats of Kivalina, Alaska, Fight Energy Giants in Appalachia.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 57-58. Lawsuit: Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corporation, et al.
Revesz, Richard L., and Jack Lienke. 2016. Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.” New York: Oxford University Press. 221 pp.
Revesz, Richard L., and Jack Lienke. 2016. “How Obama Went from Coal’s Top Cheerleader to Its No. 1 Enemy.” Grist (blog), 15 February. 2,409 words. Excerpt from the authors’ new book, Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal” (Oxford University Press, 2015). http://grist.org/climate-energy/how-obama-went-from-coals-top-cheerleader-to-its-no-1-enemy/.
Rivard, Betty. 2014. “Marietta Manufacturing Company.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 2 (Summer): 30-35. History of the company and the construction and repair of boats and barges in Point Pleasant, on the Ohio River.
Ross, Matthew R. V., Brian L. McGlynn, and Emily S. Bernhardt. 2016. “Deep Impact: Effects of Mountaintop Mining on Surface Topography, Bedrock Structure, and Downstream Waters” [W. Va., Mud River watershed]. Environmental Science and Technology, 22 January, 2064-2074. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b04532.
Roth, Paul, with Pat Finkel. 2014. “When Commuters Took the Train: Rail Passenger Service in Western Pennsylvania.” Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 4 (Winter): 44-57. Memories of various railroads, routes, and stations, 1940s-1960s.
Sachs, Avigail, and Tricia A. Stuth. 2013. “Innovation and Tradition: Eighty Years of Housing Construction in Southern Appalachia” [TVA; Norris House; pre-fab]. Construction History 28, no. 1: 65-82.
Sadler, Jacob, and Hilda E. Kurtz. 2014. “The Politics of Scale in a Wind Farm Controversy in Ashe County, North Carolina” [Big Spring Mountain]. Southeastern Geographer 54, no. 3 (Fall): 233-248.
Sandlos, John, and Arn Keeling. 2013. “ Zombie Mines and the (Over)burden of History.” Solutions 4, no. 3 (June). 1,791 words. http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/23361.
Sanzillo, Tom, and David Schlissel. 2016. “After Bankruptcies, Coal’s Dirty Legacy Lives On.” New York Times, 14 April, 23(A), Op-Ed. 866 words. “The bankruptcy filing on Wednesday by Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector producer of coal, is the latest in a series of major coal company collapses that threaten to leave behind a costly legacy that will haunt taxpayers and consumers for years.” http://nyti.ms/1SNFrPq.
Sauceman, Fred. 2013. “An Investment in Iron.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 12-14. Jerry Don is one of 220 employees who make cast iron cookware at Lodge Manufacturing in South Pittsburg, Tenn.
Schafft, Kai A., Yetkin Borlu, and Leland Glenna. 2013. “The Relationship between Marcellus Shale Gas Development in Pennsylvania and Local Perceptions of Risk and Opportunity.” Rural Sociology 78, no. 2 (June): 143-166. Map, tables.
Schmoll, Brett. 2013. “Masculine and Dead in the Mining Community: The Gendering of Death and the Monongah Mine Explosion of 1907” [W. Va.]. Journal of Appalachian Studies 19, no. 1-2 (Spring-Fall): 27-45. The worst mining disaster in American history. “The public response to this tragedy was partly determined by a gendering of the miners. Scholars have tended to focus on the labor conditions and the ethnic or social divisions in Appalachian communities.”
Shackel, Paul A. 2015. “The Meaning of Place in the Anthracite Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 22, no. 3: 200-213. “The Anthracite Heritage Project was founded to uncover one of the most tragic incidents in US labour history, the Lattimer Massacre [1897; Hazleton, Pa.] .... as well as other archaeological work that focuses explicitly on issues of immigration.”
Shackel Paul A. 2016. “When the Mines Closed: Heritage Building in Northeastern Pennsylvania.” General Anthropology 23, no. 1 (Spring): 1-10.
Sheppard, Kate. 2014. “West Virginia Spill Exposes Disturbing Lack of Data About Hazardous Chemicals.” Huffington Post, 15 January. 1,223 words, with video clip (2:40 min.) and 24-photo gallery. January 9th chemical spill on the Elk River contaminated water supply in nine-counties area. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/west-virginia-chemical-spill_n_4598346.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=011514&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title#slide=3313327.
Shulman, Peter A. 2015. Coal & Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 317 pp. Global/political/historical scope.
Shulman, Peter A. 2015. “Anthracite Country Reaches for the World, 1851.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 139, no. 3 (October): 360-62. “Pennsylvania and Maryland’s fight over naval coal contracts involved potentially vast export markets.”
Silverstein, Ken. 2015. “Coal Industry Has Wounded Itself Much Worse than Obama’s Policies Ever Could.” Forbes, 23 October. 1,223 words. “...its own strong-armed tactics have worked to oust it from America’s energy throne. And no individual personifies that trait more than the man on trial: Don Blankenship, former chief executive of Massey Energy.” http://onforb.es/1Gv8cAB.
Six, Dean, and Paul Eastwood. 2014. Mid-Century Modern Glass in America. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer. 272 pp. Focuses on glassware designed and produced 1945-1974 by 30 plus manufacturers in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia tri-state area; also New York, Indiana, Texas, and Canada. With 700 illustrations.
Sleight-Brennan, Sandra. 2016. “Lessons from Fracking: The Ohio Experience.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 31, no. 2 (Winter): 18-20. Hyraulic fracturing drilling hazards and citizen activism.
Stakem, Pat. 2015. “The Curious Case of the Boiler in the Basement: A Mount Savage Thriller.” Journal of the Alleghenies 51: 18-24. Western Maryland; 1880s; T. H. Paul small locomotives built for mining and logging operations.
Stewart, James B. 2014. “A Clash of Ideals and Investments at Swarthmore.” New York Times 17 May, 1(B). 1,626 words. “A student-led movement aimed at ridding college endowment funds of fossil fuel investments got its start at Swarthmore, which has yet to sign on to the cause.” http://nyti.ms/1hRB5Fa.
Stewart, James B. 2015. “King Coal, Long Besieged, Is Deposed by the Market.” New York Times, 7 August. 1,236 words, plus video clip (1:27 min.) of a CNBC interview. “Market forces have accomplished in just a few years what environmentalists and social advocates have struggled for decades to achieve.” http://nyti.ms/1KTIM0M.
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. 2015. “Coal Baron’s Trial May Hinge on His Secretly Recorded Conversations.” New York Times, 17 October, 1(A). 1,550 words. Don Blankenship, former head of Massey Energy whose 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion killed 29, is “the central character, prosecutors say, in a historic case of conspiracy to flout health and safety laws in pursuit of profits.” http://nyti.ms/1LpqsIG.
Swanson, Drew. 2016. “From Georgia to California and Back: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Southern Gold Mining.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 100, no. 2: 160-186.
Swiger, Lynette. 2015. “H.B. Huffman Coal Company.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 41, no. 2 (Summer): 56-61. History of this family-run company with five mines in the Clarksburg and Fairmont area (Harrison and Marion counties).
Tarr, Joel A., and Karen Clay. 2015. “Boom and Bust in Pittsburgh Natural Gas History: Development, Policy, and Environmental Effects, 1878-1920.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 139, no. 3 (October): 323-342. History of the Pittsburgh region’s first natural gas boom and its negative environmental effects, noting parallels with the current Marcellus Shale natural gas boom.
Thompson, Andrew R. H. 2015. Sacred Mountains: A Christian Ethical Approach to Mountaintop Removal. Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies series. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 193 pp. Contents: Preface: Ethics in its place | Introduction: Overturning mountains | Downstream impacts: environmental, economic, and social effects of mountaintop removal | Environmental ethics and the construction of values | Relation, revelation, and revolution: a theocentric approach to mountaintop removal | The meanings of the mountains: discourses of power, identity, and destruction in the mountaintop removal debate | All my holy mountain: power, identity, and reclamation from a theocentric perspective | Loving the mountains: conclusions, challenges, and ways forward.
Thompson, Christie. 2014. “The Untold Story of What Happened at an Overcrowded West Virginia Jail after the Chemical Spill” [Jan. 9, 2014; Elk River; Charleston]. ClimateProgress, 21 May. 3,959 words. http://thkpr.gs/1osfqdy.
Timko, Stephen M. 2014. Appalachian Coal Mines and Railroads in Color. Vol. 2, Virginia. Photographs by Everett N. Young. Scotch Plains, N.J.: Morning Sun Books. 128 pp. “Featured are the western Virginia coal mines and railroad operations of CSX and Norfolk Southern and their predecessor roads - the Louisville & Nashville (L&N), Clinchfield, Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O), Norfolk and Western (N&W), Southern, Interstate and the Haysi Railroad.”
Timko, Stephen M. 2012. Appalachian Coal Mines and Railroads in Color. Vol. 3, Southern West Virginia. Photographs by Everett N. Young. Scotch Plains, N.J.: Morning Sun Books. 128 pp.
Tinnell, Shannon Colainni. 2014. “Gone, Not Forgotten: Recalling the Everettville Mining Disaster” [1927; Monongalia Co.; 111 dead]. Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 40, no. 3 (Fall): 42-47. Attached article: “Writing ‘Henry Russell’s Last Words’ [song], by Diana Jones, 48-49.
Tobar, Héctor. 2014. Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 309 pp. “Relates the experiences of the thirty-three men who endured entrapment beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days during the San José mine collapse outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010,” four months after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Montcoal, Raleigh County, West Virginia.
Toobin, Jeffrey. 2014. “What’s the Matter with West Virginia?” New Yorker, 19 November, 781 words. “Last week, [Don] Blankenship, the former chief executive officer of Massey Energy, was charged in a federal indictment for a variety of crimes in connection with a disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in April, 2010, in which twenty-nine coal workers were killed.” http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/whats-matter-west-virginia.
Trip, Gabriel. 2014. “Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog Was Defanged.” New York Times, 1 March, 1(A). 1,739 words. Duke Energy’s February spill of 30,000 tons of coal ash into Dan River; N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. http://nyti.ms/1eGUiHa.
Tropea, Joseph L. 2013. “Catterina DeCarlo Davia — A West Virginia Donkey.” Women’s Studies 42, no. 4 (June): 369-389. Biography of Italian immigrant Davia (b. 1864) whose husband was killed in the catastrophic 1907 Monongah, W. Va., coal mine explosion. Includes details of her legendary 29 years of coal scavenging resulting in a 300-ton pile in her backyard.
Tropea, Joseph L. 2013. “Monongah Revisited: Sources, Body Parts, and Ethnography.” West Virginia History, n.s. 7, no. 2 (Fall): 63-92. Discusses the catastrophic mine explosion of December 6, 1907, in Monongah, W. Va., and incorrect documentation recorded by the Fairmont Coal Company.
Tucker-Sullivan, Lori. 2013. “Lumbering the East Tennessee Coves.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 27-29. “Each day, my grandmother rose at four o’clock in the morning to prepare 200 ‘cathead’ biscuits, sausage, gravy, bacon, and eggs in the cookhouse at Kirkland Cove.”
United States. 2013. Effect of the President’s FY 2013 Budget and Legislative Proposals for the Office of Surface Mining on Private Sector Job Creation, Domestic Energy Production, State Programs, and Deficit Reduction: Oversight Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Second Session, Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Serial no. 112-99. 2013. Washington: Government Printing Office. 69 pp. Coal mining; W. Va.; stream conservation. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo36151.
United States. 2013. A Tragic Anniversary: Improving Safety at Dangerous Mines One Year After Upper Big Branch: Hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, United States Senate, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, First Session ... March 31, 2011. S. Hrg. 112-82. Washington: Government Printing Office. 45 pp. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo38446.
United States. 2013. Obama Administration’s Actions against the Spruce Coal Mine: Canceled Permits, Lawsuits, and Lost Jobs: Oversight Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Second Session, Friday, June 1, 2012. Serial no. 112-113. Washington: Government Printing Office. 47 pp. Mountaintop removal mining, Logan County, W. Va. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo37578.
United States. 2013. Pipeline Safety: An on-the-Ground Look at Safeguarding the Public: Field Hearing Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, First Session, January 28, 2013. S. Hrg. 113-043. Washington: Government Printing Office. 95 pp. Hearing at Charleston, W. Va., in the wake of the December, 2012, gas pipeline explosion at Sissonville, W. Va. http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo38873.
Valentine, Katie. 2016. “New Bill Would Clean Up Abandoned Coal Mines and Jump Start the Appalachian Economy.” ThinkProgress, 4 February. 784 words. “The RECLAIM Act [H.R. 4456], introduced Wednesday by five representatives from Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, would make $1 billion available to coal communities.” Full Title: “To amend the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 to provide funds to States and Indian tribes for the purpose of promoting economic revitalization, diversification, and development in economically distressed communities through the reclamation and restoration of land and water resources adversely affected by coal mining carried out before August 3, 1977, and for other purposes.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/04/3745852/.
Van Nostrand, James, Evan Hansen, Beren Argetsinger, Jeff Simcoe, and Joseph James. 2014. Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction Opportunities for the West Virginia Power Sector: Discussion Paper. Morgantown, W. Va.: WVU Law Center for Energy & Sustainable Development; and Downstream Strategies. 17 pp. “... reviews EPA’s proposed rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants and presents policy recommendations on steps West Virginia could take to comply with these rules while also capturing the economic, social, and environmental benefits of expanding the state’s energy economy.” http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/clean-power-plan-discussion-paper_final_10-21-14.pdf.
Vanderburg, Timothy W. 2013. Cannon Mills and Kannapolis: Persistent Paternalism in a Textile Town [N.C.; 1880s-1960s]. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 280 pp.
Ward, Ken, Jr. 2013. “Judge Tosses UMW Benefit Case against Peabody, Arch.” Charleston Gazette, 27 September. 462 words, with link to 13-page court ruling. “A federal judge has thrown out a suit brought by the United Mine Workers and a group of retired miners who are trying to preserve pension and health-care benefits for 10,000 active and retired Patriot Coal miners and their families.” http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201309270040.
Ward, Ken. 2014. “How Industrial Chemical Regulation Failed West Virginia” [massive chemical spill; Freedom Industries’ tank farm; Jan. 9; Elk River]. Interview by Dave Davies. Fresh Air, 29 January. NPR radio. Interview highlights: transcript, 1,218 words; podcast, 36 min. http://n.pr/1hMXNQc.
Ward, Ken. 2015. “Blankenship Guilty of Conspiring to Violate Mine Safety Rules.” Charleston Gazette-Mail, 3 December. 2,473 words. “Former Massey Energy Co. chief executive Don Blankenship, once one of the most powerful men in the region’s coal industry, was convicted Thursday by a federal jury of conspiring to violate mine safety and health standards at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners died in an April 2010 explosion.” https://shar.es/1cTpL8.
Ward, Ken. 2015. “Blankenship Trial Examined WV’s Complex Ties to Coal.” Charleston Gazette-Mail, 5 December. 3,602 words. https://shar.es/1cTvUa. (Check the Gazette-Mail’s Blankenship trial page for complete coverage of the trial and the verdict, updates on the case, a timeline, exhibits and other features: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/blankenship.)
Ward, Ken. 2016. “Court Vacates Blair Mountain Delisting from Historic Places Registry.” Charleston Gazette-Mail, 11 April. 331 words. “A federal judge in Washington on Monday ruled that the U.S. Interior Department was wrong when it removed the site of the Blair Mountain labor battle [1921] from the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.” https://shar.es/1jCys6.
Warrick, Joby, and Lydia DePillis. 2016. “A huge coal miners’ pension plan is on the brink of failure. One senator is blocking a fix.” Washington Post, 9 February. 1,564 words. “Despite bipartisan support for a plan to save the workers’ retirement and healthcare, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stands in the way.” http://wpo.st/wARC1.
Weaver, Karol K. 2013. “‘It’s the Union Man That Holds the Winning Hand’: Gambling in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region.” Pennsylvania History 80, no. 3 (Summer): 401-419. History of gambling in the coal region employing theories derived from anthropology, working-class studies, and feminist theory. “...gambling provided...leisure activities, it was religiously sanctioned, and it represented a sense of control in their otherwise risky and chance-filled lives.”
Weber, Mark W., and Stephen H. Paschen. 2014. Side by Side: Alice and Staughton Lynd, the Ohio Years. Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press. 178 pp. “Alice and Staughton Lynd have devoted their lives to the struggle for social justice .... Rather than moving from fight to fight, the Lynds lived within the community in need, helping steelworkers and residents cope with the devastating closures of the major steel mills in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley” [1976-2011].
White, Ahmed. 2016. The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America. Oakland: University of California Press. 398 pp. Youngstown, Ohio; Chicago.
Wickersham, Mary Eleanor, and Robert P. Yehl. 2014. “The Cotton Mill Village Turned City: A Retrospective Analysis of Three of Georgia’s Smallest Cities.” Journal of Urban History 40, no. 5 (September): 917-932. Lamar, Bibb, and Colquitt counties.
Wilkerson, Jessica. 2015. “Ella May Wiggins: Mill Mother ‘Just A’waiting for a Strike” [textile industry; 1929; Gastonia, N.C.]. In North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2, ed. M. Gillespie and S. McMillen, 169-190. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Withers, Bob. 2013. “Readin, Writin’ and Ridin’ the Rails.” Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, no. 3 (Fall): 18-25. Story of the New York Central (NYC) branch railroad line which the Kanawha County school board paid, 1925-1958, to transport up to 200 children to school each year from areas inaccessible to school buses. Sidebar article: “The Last Run of the Rails” (1958), by Marion D. Leake.
Wize, Brian, and Christopher A. Badurek. 2013. “GIS Modeling to Site Wind Power Parks in the New River Gorge Region, WV.” Pennsylvania Geographer 51, no. 2 (Fall-Winter): 37-50.
Wolensky, Robert P., and William A. Hastie. 2013. Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1895-1959. Easton, Pa.: Canal History and Technology Press. 445 pp.
Yeoman, Barry. 2013. “The Shale Rebellion” [“In Pennsylvania, a Band of Unlikely Activists Fights the Fracking Boom”]. The American Prospect. http://storyscapes.prospect.org/shale-rebellion/. Multimedia website with photos, video, audio clips, maps and diagrams.
Young, J. J., Nicholas Brandon Fry, Gregory M. Smith, and Elizabeth Davis Young. 2016. The Steam and Diesel Era in Wheeling, West Virginia: Photographs by J.J. Young Jr. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 256 pp. One-hundred-fifty b&w images, 1930s-1960s.
Young, Kevin. 2013. “Following in Prehistoric Footsteps: The Birth of the Mica Industry in Bakersville, North Carolina.” Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 29, no. 1 (Summer): 30-31. “Flourishing from about 200 B.C. to 400 A.D., the Hopewell people....had established trade networks stretching hundreds of miles, from Ohio to the western North Carolina mountains.”
Zembower, Frances. 2016. “Pinkerton Tunnel” [photos]. Journal of the Alleghenies 52: 3-8. The B&O Railroad tunnel between Markelton and Fort Hill, Pa., was built of timber in 1871, and completely rebuilt from hand-cut stone in 1885.
Ziaukas, Tim. 2014. “Oz in the Oilfields? Searching for L. Frank Baum in Bradford” [McKean Co.]. Western Pennsylvania History 97, no. 2 (Summer): 54-68. “The family’s riches derived from the oil fields of northwestern Pennsylvania afforded L. Frank the leisure to later conjure the world of Oz.”
Zwerdling, Daniel. 2014. “Weeks Later, More Questions than Answers in W. Va. Chemical Spill” [Jan. 9; Elk River, Charleston; interview highlights]. Morning Edition, 31 January. NPR radio. Transcript, 691 words; podcast, 4:29 min. “No one even knows for sure exactly what chemicals, and how much, spilled.” http://www.npr.org/2014/01/31/269006655/weeks-later-more-questions-than-answers-in-w-va-chemical-spill.