Davitt McAteer

On December 6, 1907, two explosions at the Monongah coal mines in West Virginia killed over 400 people, making it the worst mining disaster in US history. There's a gripping history to it, with the coal companies trying to increase profits and withstand union intervention, pitted against hundreds of poor miners, many of them immigrants deeply in debt.

Unfortunately, this book generally fails in telling the tale. A strong editor would have pointed out the needless repetition (one example: "Father D'Andrea ... had been working without rest since Friday morning" on page 145; in the same chapter just a few pages later, "Father D'Andrea worked nonstop. For three days he neither slept nor bathed" [149]) and odd typographical errors (the French mining official Jacques Taffanel is "Jacques Caffarul" [160] and "Jacques Caffanel" [169]). The entire book feels rushed and clunky in most places, which is too bad as much of the story that needs to be told is hidden within, surrounded by mind-numbing lists (like a person-by-person accounting of the people who donated money to the relief cause) and paragraphs that jump in and out of their timeline.

McAteer does go further than just the mine explosion and its immediate aftermath. He writes a short history of the nation's mining laws that stuttered into existence, mostly occurring after yet another mine disaster. These chapters remind us that even with all the laws and all the new technology, sometimes we're still making the same mistakes we made over 100 years ago.… (mer)