Customer Reviews

Coal: A Human History

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I moved back to the United States after living for about 8 years in Manchester, England. Even today, you can still identify the effects of coal in Manchester--from the many chimneys around the Northern landscape, to the coal-blackened Victorian warehouses. When I bought a house there, I pulled-up carpets that covered wood floors since 1911, and I myself was covered with coal dust that accumulated over the decades. Finally, in the North of England, you still have a few coal mining villages and towns that have very strong cultures. So I was aware of coal when I lived there, and had become curious.

Freese's book is an excellent and engaging history of the history of coal and its relationship to the history of three nations: The United Kingdom, the United States, and China. She writes exceptionally fluidly, with, at once, broad sweeps and minute details that keep you both interetsed and informed. She also has a lovely dry sense of humor. Her chapter on Manchester, by the way, is excellent.

The book isn't academic (to her credit), but nor is it a vapid popular account. Instead, Freese has written a book that does the nearly impossible in that it is well-researched, historically accurate, engaging almost, but not, to the point of being chatty. I couldn't put it down. What it lacks, by way of an academic angle, is a discussion of what else had been written in the past about the history of coal, as well as a theoretical approach. This is hardly a criticism because that really isn't the intention of this book. In fact, believe the book would have suffered had she taken this approach.

I agree with another reviewer who suggested that Freese didn't know how to end the book--although I did find her discussion of alternatives to coal to be compelling. There are two typos in the book that evaded the copy editor, but otherwise this book is a small masterpiece. You will enjoy it.

I found this book to be well-written in a literary sense. While correctly critical of coal where justified, Freese does not descend into partisan polemic and cliche when discussing difficult issues.

The book covers nearly all the major issues that coal has faced over the centuries - including the little-recognised fact that Europe went through an energy crisis as forests were depleted before coal came into widespread use hundreds of years ago.

However, I was surprised that Freese did not cover the major role that coal played in the development of organic chemical industries based on coal liquids in the 19th century.

We owe synthetic dyes and major advances in the understanding of organic chemistry to coal liquid by-products of coke and gas making in the 19th century.

Solvents such as benzene were also first made from coal tars.

The misuse of these chemicals also led to major advances in the understanding of occupational health and epidemiology - some of the most significant medical advances of the 20th century.

This book discusses the history of coal as a two-edged sword, as both a creator and a destroyer. Freese is extraordinary in her history of coal and its impact on England, and then on how coal has impacted American history as well.

The social effects of coal consumption for the last five centuries has been immense and far-reaching -- allowing human comfort in otherwise unlivable areas, later allowing its energy to be harnessed for transportation and then electric power. That this comes at an astonishing price in terms of human lungs comes as no surprise but Freese's narrative is vivid, subtle, and convincing.

The last chapters on China and the future of coal read more anecdotally, more like a travelogue, so they seem a bit disjointed from the first part of the book. That's the cost of a shift from historical writing into contemporary issues and speculation on the future impact of coal, which I do think Freese has accomplished with measure and balance.

If you approach this book hoping to get an in depth and historic view of coal as a substance that formed and shaped much of human history and culture, you will find little satisfaction here. I was expecting a book something akin to Mark Kurlansky's excellent books "Salt" and "Cod" but instead found a rushed and basic overview of the history of coal and the coal industry so the author could get to her soapbox and start talking about how evil coal is for the environment. The last hundred pages are a pretty in depth sermon (more in depth than the history in the book) about why coal is bad and why we must forsake it for more environmentally friendly forms of energy. All right, I get it and I don't disagree with the premise, but my very negative rating of this book is due to the fact that it is disinginuous in its reperesentation. If the book had been called "Coal: Ho-Ha, Good God, What Is It Gooood For" I might not hold this view. But the book was called "Coal: A Human History" and there is very little history (especially in the "other uses for coal other than burning" department) and more eco-rant by an author who holds her subject in very little regard. Disappointing.

A very good account of the history of coal, The author explains the basics, the different types of coal and how they are formed, The book progresses onto early societies and their treatment of the "burning stones". As can be expected the major part of the book is about the industrial revolution and the struggle of cities such as London and Pittsburg to maintain a habital city..The coal industry became "King Coal" and became the industrial lifeblood in many countries. A vital industry over which industrial sectors were formed and labor rights were gained. The Final chapters of the book deal with the pollution problems brought on by the burning coal. Two serious points are brought up;
1) Society can engineer away most of the pollution problems to the point where coal approaches almost perfect combustion. It will result in a much higher cost to utilize coal, and perfect combustion will still leave us with a massive Carbon dioxide output problem. Perhaps accelerating the global warming scenarios
2)The China question, as a large developing nation China is also heavily dependent on coal as a cheap and readily available energy source, and because of China's scarce resources it applies minimal polution control.
This combination does not bode well for the future. This reader thought the material was presented in a very professional manner. It was not a "the sky is falling" type of book. It is in fact a good book to obtain a balanced view. It explains how humans have lived with coal in the past and states that societies may have major decisions to make in the future.

This book is a good introduction to the history of coal and issues surrounding its use. It's not an extensive history of all of its uses as other reviewers have observed and the author's credentials as an enviromental lawyer let you know which side of the fence she stands on. However, she makes a good try at presenting a balanced viewpoint, and usually succeeds. The book is very readable, and for anyone with an interest in energy issues, it should be entertaining.

With todays concerns regarding energy, and the switch from oil to alternative fuels, this book provides how it felt when the use coal had reached its peak in the 19th century and oil began to replace coal as a cleaner, more efficient alternative fuel source.

The book was well written, and gave a timeline of coals inception as an energy source, and the ill-effects experienced by society as a result of its use. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in non-fiction.

Barbara Freese's book has it all. It's about an important topic and it's very easy to read. The first few chapters deal with the discovery of coal as fuel, the pollution that resulted, the use of coal to run the British empire, and how coal was dug out of the ground. She describes the industrial revolution, noting that Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, not James Watt. (Although Watt did make important improvements.)

Then she switches over to the US. She describes the coal-mining regions of the Appalachians and the two types of coal. (One burns easier but is dirtier than the other.)

Pollution is a key part of the story throughout these chapters. That sets up the final third of the book: coal mining gets automated, alternative fuels are introduced, and the environmental impact of pollution is described.

If this is your first book on coal, pollution, or fossil fuel, it won't be your last. Barbara Freese makes the topic very interesting. She whets your appetite for more.

This is a truly insightful and fluid book. The story line is very well written and highly informative. It brings out the history of the black rock and weaves it quite compellingly into the history of modern western civilization. The differentiation between anthracite and bituminous coal serves to illustrate the differences between the East and the Midwest of the US.
The book takes an odd turn, however, when it turns into political commentary and develops the themes espoused at Kyoto. There is no mention of all of the big coal towns that have sprung up over the last few decdades in the modern American West. Places like Gillette, Kemmerer, Craig or Rock Springs where truly world-class, state-of-the-art technology has come to the fore to mine the rock as economically and sensitively as possible. Similarly, there is no mention of the state-of-the-art rail systems that serve these hubs to bring coal to major metropolitan communities. And to, there is no discussion of new fluidized bed systems designed to burn the pulverized coal as cleanly as possible.
When I finished the book, I felt somewhat diasappointed that the theme of "A Human History" was truncated after Kyoto. If I had wanted to read a natural resources poli sci book, I would have bought one.
Nonetheless, the author is to be commended for her first attempt here and this reader looks forward to reading her next work.

Coal doesn't leap to one's mind as a terribly interesting topic, now does it? This book, however, proves fascinating from start to finish. It depicts the commodity's influence on human survival, suffering, and industrial growth in a captivating presentation. Looking at coal's history provides fresh insights into parts of history we're already familiar with. I've literally lost sleep over this book - couldn't put it down!