Common Book 2014-15: The Price of Justice: For Research & Discussion

In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century.

Overnight, the nation's demand for coal turned sleepy, little places in Southern West Virginia into boomtowns and helped cities such as Charleston and Huntington grow and prosper as gateways to and from the coalfields.

Caudill's study begins in the violence of the Indian wars and ends in the economic despair of the 1950s and 1960s in Appalachia.

Cornell Studies in Industrial and Labor Relations publication.

Published by University of Tennessee Pres in 1982.

From London to the rat-infested coal mines of Pennsylvania, from the impoverished slums of Manchester to the toxic city streets of Beijing, Coal is a captivating narrative about an ordinary substance that has done extraordinary things- a simple black rock that could well determine our fate as a species.

Because we have failed to develop alternative energy sources, coal has become the default fuel for the 21st century. Veteran journalist Goodell examines the faulty assumptions underlying coal's revival and shatters the myth of cheap coal energy.

A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it - a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict.

This book tells the story of the survivors' unprecedented lawsuit.

The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster explains how the coal company and federal and state officials failed to protect the 78 men who died in the mountain. Based on public records and interviews with those who worked in the mine, No.9 describes the conditions underground before and after the disaster and the legal struggles of the miners' widows to gain justice and transform coal mine safety legislation.

The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History first appeared in 1963, a little book by a man with no training as either a writer or a historian. Since then, this volume has become an essential sourcebook, consulted and quoted in nearly every study of coal field history.

In The Nine, acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin takes us into the chambers of the most important -- and secret -- legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, revealing the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.

In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization.

Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart.