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Black Gold provides an on-the-ground view of the extraordinary human toll of our country's determination to mine and burn coal as our primary source of energy and the avarice and greed of coal barons who profited on the backs of workers who were treated as expendable indentured slaves. Gina McCarthy, US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, 2013-2017 Bob Wyss's Black Gold is a clear-eyed history of the American coal industry and wisely spotlights the immense political power long wielded by corrupt coal barons. Decades of carbon emissions, faux science, and dangerous lies have wreaked havoc on our planet and workers' health--all to keep polluters profiting handsomely.--US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Black Gold is simply the best environmental history ever written about the coal industry and the fascinating people who ignited America's industrial revolution. From a wild, naked barge ride down the Lehigh River in the early 1800s to the westward race between railroads and canals, the book traces the coal industry's struggle for great power and the miners' attempts to cope with the cost. Wyss achieves this with a solid historical narrative and unflinching details of outrageous labor conditions and life-threatening air pollution disasters. These include the company store 'Esau scrip' system, which involved secret sexual servitude, and the choking city smog episodes so intense that lanterns were needed in broad daylight. Written with all the insight, sympathy, horror, and humor that environmental history can evoke, Black Gold is a monumental contribution.--William (Bill) Kovarik, author and compiler of the Environmental History Timeline A terrific environmental historian who writes well too, Wyss has a lifetime of expertise in environmental issues and the journalists who cover them. If he wrote it, it's worth your time.--Dan Fagin, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation