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Old car holding up a mining chute on the over of the book “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Rock-Fuel and Warlike People: On Mitch Troutman’s “The Bootleg Coal Rebellion”

Native son Jonah Walters finds something entirely too innocent about the tales told about the anthracite industry’s origins.
by Jonah Walters via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 21, 2024
Post card depicting coal miners in PA

When Did Americans Start Using Fossil Fuel?

The nineteenth-century establishment of mid-Atlantic coal mines and canals gave America its first taste of abundant fossil fuel energy.
by Livia Gershon, Christopher F. Jones via JSTOR Daily on October 11, 2023
Illustration of a coal stove with the roof of a house, as if the whole house is a furnace.

When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said 'No Thanks'

Back in the 19th century, coal was the nation's newfangled fuel source—and it faced the same resistance as wind and solar today.
by Clive Thompson via Smithsonian on July 5, 2022
Coal power plant.
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It’s Time to Ditch Coal, Not Clean It

In the 19th century, Americans abandoned one source of dirty energy. Can they do it again?
by Raymond Malewitz via Made By History on July 26, 2017

Coal No Longer Fuels America. But the Legacy — and the Myth — Remain.

Coal country still clings to the industry that was long its chief source of revenue and a way of life.
by Karen Heller via Retropolis on July 9, 2017
‘Fifty Shades of White’ by Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.

Remembering the Future

Climate change, colonization, and the Navajo Nation.
by Hazel V. Carby via London Review of Books on March 27, 2024
Picture of Joe Manchin

Joe Manchin’s Deep Corporate Ties

An underexamined aspect of Manchin’s pro-business positions in the Senate is his early membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council.
by Dan Kaufman via The New Yorker on October 26, 2021
Phil Wiggins performs at the Blair Mountain Centennial. | Rafael Barker, collection of the WV Mine Wars Museum.

The Singing Left

At a recent commemoration of the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, songs of struggle took center stage.
by Kim Kelly via The Baffler on September 21, 2021
Map of Pittsburgh Coal Company rate schedules

Coalminers and Coordination Rights

In the two decades before the Hepburn Act’s enactment, two entities vied for the right to coordinate the price and distribution of coal.
by Branden Adams via LPE Project on July 15, 2021

America’s Conflicted Landscapes

A nation that identifies itself with nature begins to fall apart when it can no longer agree on what nature is.
by David E. Nye via The MIT Press Reader on April 20, 2021
Digital art with "Help Wanted Sign", square with word "Tuna" and bottle

Solidarity Now

An experiment in oral history of the present.
by Wen Stephenson via The Baffler on January 15, 2021
Horses standing next to a car.

What Extremely Muscular Horses Teach Us About Climate Change

You can’t understand the history of American energy use without them. A new visual history puts them in context.
by Robinson Meyer via The Atlantic on December 8, 2020
Armed miners at the military headquarters of the United Mine Workers, in Trinidad, Colorado, the month of the Ludlow massacre.

There Was Blood

The Ludlow massacre revisited.
by Caleb Crain via The New Yorker on January 12, 2009
Aerial view of Oakland.

The Future Happens in Oakland First. That’s a Cautionary Tale for Global Cities

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones.’
by Lois Beckett, Alexis C. Madrigal via The Guardian on March 22, 2025
Trump's airplane in Greenland.
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Why Trump Wants Greenland—And Why He Probably Won't Get It

He's not the first to set his sights on the island.
by James Patton Rogers, Caroline Kennedy Pipe via Made By History on January 23, 2025
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Monthly Review on November 13, 2024
Volunteers at Big Creek Missions in Leslie County, Kentucky

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

I’ve been going back to eastern Kentucky for over a decade. Since 2016, something there has changed.
by Bradley Devlin via The American Conservative on April 22, 2024
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 presidential inauguration.

The First New Deal

Planning, market coordination, and the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933.
by Sanjukta Paul via Phenomenal World on March 28, 2024
President Obama wipes the sweat from his forehead at a press conference.

We Now Know the Full Extent of Obama’s Disastrous Apathy Toward the Climate Crisis

Obama’s official oral history contains new evidence of his indifference and foot-dragging on the most important issue of our time.
by Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on June 5, 2023
Emissions from Union Carbide’s Ferro-Alloy Plant, Charleston, West Virginia, May 1973

The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights

As environmental rights seem on the verge of a comeback, it’s worth remembering why they once seemed so promising, and why that promise remains unfulfilled.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on March 15, 2023
At American Fossil Quarry, on privately owned land near Kemmerer, Wyoming, hammer- and chisel-wielding visitors pay $69 to $89 to spend up to four hours hunting for fossils. Finders, keepers.

The 50 Million-Year-Old Treasures of Fossil Lake

In a forbidding Wyoming desert, scientists and fortune hunters search for the surprisingly intact remains of horses and other creatures that lived long ago.
by Richard Conniff via Smithsonian on August 23, 2022
Illustration of Clarence Thomas in front of factory

The Radicalization of Clarence Thomas

His time working for Monsanto and other polluting industries helped make him the fierce conservative he is today.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on August 13, 2021
A Blair Mountain coal miner with his rifle slung over his shoulder, 1921.

A Century Ago, West Virginia Miners Took Up Arms Against King Coal

In 1921, twenty thousand armed miners in West Virginia marched on the coal bosses and were met with bombs and submachine guns.
by Arvind Dilawar, Chuck Keeney via Jacobin on June 23, 2021
Drawings of houses

How Trees Made Us Human

More than iron, stone, or oil, wood explains human history.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Republic on December 1, 2020

Oral Histories of The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire

The events of June 1969 have come to define both Cleveland and the river. Some Clevelanders have a different story.
by Rebekkah Rubin via Belt Magazine on June 3, 2019
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez speaks to an audience in front of a Green New Deal sign.
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The Federal Government Subsidized the Carbon Economy. Now it Should Subsidize a Greener One.

Why the Green New Deal fits right in with America’s energy economy.
by Ryan Driskell Tate via Made By History on April 26, 2019
Artistic photo of factory pollution

Endless Combustion

Three new books examine how the rise of coal, oil, and gas have permanently remade our world.
by Bill McKibben via The Nation on February 6, 2019

Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal

A digital exhibit on the history and legacy of the canal.
by Heidi Zimmer, Dan Ward via Digital Public Library of America on January 1, 2018

A Hillbilly Syllabus

“Some people call me Hillbilly, Some people call me Mountain Man; Well, you can call me Appalachia, ’Cause Appalachia is what I am.” —Del McCoury
by Eric Kerl via ChiTucky on December 10, 2017
Organic chemistry graphic of burning tree

How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World

The organic compounds that enabled industrialization are having unintended consequences for the planet’s life.
by Rebecca Altman via The Atlantic on October 4, 2017
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