My life was neither created nor destroyed by coal. So much of this book talks about the balance between cost and benefit/harm, but it also spends a lot of time focusing on the industries that built up around coal: iron, transportation, heating/engines. I grew up not in coal country, but adjacent to it in Virginia, where I would see thousands of coal trains over time. The history itself focuses on the development of coal as a fuel source, it’s other more ornamental uses in history, […]