Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia (Hardcover)

by Erik Reece (Author), John J. Cox (Photographer), Wendell Berry (Introduction) "Sometimes when sitting idly at my computer, I'll go to the federal Office of Surface Mining website and click on "Statistics..." (more)
Key Phrases: mountaintop removal, mountaintop mining, pond break, Lost Mountain, Martin County, Harlan County (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Reece's up-close assessment of a rapacious coal industry is a searing indictment of how a country's energy lust is ravaging the hills and hollows of Appalachia. The first-time author chronicles how, in one year, from October 2003 to September 2004, strip miners sheared away the top of Kentucky's aptly named Lost Mountain. This process of "mountaintop removal" left a barren wasteland that, months earlier, had supported songbirds, fox, deer and other wildlife, and a rich cover of trees. Reece's elegiac book—much more than just an eyewitness report on ecological decimation—also offers a concise history of how the coal industry long exploited workers; hints at harrowing tales of industry intimidation of antimining activists; details how toxic mining runoff has poisoned well water and how landslides have washed away homes and entire hamlets; and in a cautiously optimistic coda, reports how activists have reclaimed a few thousand acres of stripped land with reforestation projects. The Kentucky-born author, who canoed clean Appalachian rivers as a youth, has written an impassioned account of a business rife with industrial greed, devious corporate ownership and unenforced environmental laws. It's also a heartrending account of the rural residents whose lives are being ruined by strip-mining's relentless, almost unfettered, encroachment. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Criminal. That's the word that comes to mind upon reading Reece's excoriating expose of the coal industry's pernicious rape of the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Once the site of the oldest and most ecologically diverse forest in the country, now this stretch of Appalachian wilderness has gone from being a verdant North American rain forest to a bleak and dismal lunar landscape, thanks to the severely destructive strip-mining process known as "mountaintop removal." Under this radical form of coal retrieval, ore is mined by literally blasting away tops of mountains, dumping waste into the valleys below, burying streams, polluting wells, undermining buildings, and altering fragile ecologies. Reece spent a year intimately observing and chronicling the demolition of the ironically named Lost Mountain, hiking to its summit, fording its streams' headwaters, interviewing its residents, and visiting cemeteries to pay respect to those who ultimately succumbed to the pollution and violence perpetrated in the name of energy efficiency and economic viability. The tale of Kentucky's mutilated environment is one that, like the mountain, has been lost. Resounding kudos to Reece for vividly bringing this critical story to light. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Books; First Edition edition (February 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489084
• ISBN-13: 978-1594489082
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #612,220 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wow, February 12, 2006

By	Terri L. Likens "Terri Likens" (Kingston, Tenn.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reece never falters as, chapter by chapter, he pulls together the staggering case against the coal industry's highly destructive mountaintop removal mining practices.

He takes us to Lost Mountain in Perry County, Ky., and spends a year watching as the mountain is steadily leveled. He captures the voices of all parties involved and makes clear what is at stake. He shows us what is wrong in the system and even offers sound ideas for fixes.

Reece pulls no punches along the way, using government records to expose a pattern of lies and false promises. He also knows his way around the decidious forest, sharing with his readers the shy ways of creatures like cerulean warblers and flying squirrels. (One note, though, Erik: On page 83, you erroneously link the blooming of the redbud and the dogwood in March. What you were seeing with the redbud actually was the serviceberry, or sarvis tree. It's a common mistake.)

The deaths of Harry Caudill and Edward Abbey left voids that have not been filled -- until now.

Reece bursts onto the scene with the power to move mountains -- or maybe save them.

This is a must read.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Primer on Coal Removal Politics and the crimes committed against Nature and People, February 12, 2006

By	serious reader (USA) - See all my reviews

It was sad to see this "crime" is still going on in Kentucky and that little or nothing has been done about it over the course of my lifetime and that it has only gotten worse. I have lived in California for the last 20 years, having felt the need to leave Kentucky upon college graduation. I was active as a student at U of KY in 1971 and spent quite a number of weekends in Pike County trying to help the poor people while learning all I could about strip mining as it existed then. It was sad to read nothing has really changed and and the land, its resources, the wildlife, the Appalachia Mountain area is being systematically destroyed, the creeks, streams, roadways, bridges, and homes and communities also being destroyed while out of state Coal Company owners get minimal fines, slaps on the wrist and the State and the People of Kentucky get little or nothing. This would be bad if jobs were at least being created, but they aren't. This would be bad if the State of Kentucky was at least getting a fair price for the coal but it isn't even getting that. The damage caused to the roads, bridges, river, creeks, streams, land, wildlife, scenic beauty, communities of mountain people, the heritage is all being systematically destroyed without even a fair and/or just compensation. The Coal Company owners and the Politicians who fix things nice for them in DC are getting rich but Kentucky is being raped forever by this ecological travisty. Young people need to read this if only to learn how State Leaders act once they get to D.C. and legislate against the interests of the States they represent and the people who voted them in office. Anyone who has read Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature will want to read this one.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thinking Like a Dead Mountain, May 20, 2006

By	doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

The Appalachians have long been abused by the rest of America as a veritable internal colony, as coal and other resources are extracted ruthlessly and the money ends up elsewhere, leaving the resource-rich people mired in every other possible type of poverty. In a business that has been brutal for generations, the extractive industries have now introduced their most insidious practice yet – mountaintop removal mining. Instead of utilizing mineshafts, or even terribly destructive strip mining, the companies are now forcibly removing entire mountaintops to get at relatively scant quantities of coal. Forested peaks become flat rocky mesas, while rivers and valleys are buried under the resulting slagheaps. In addition to the obvious environmental devastation, this cataclysmic new process continues to inflict terrible human costs on local residents. In this book, Erik Reece reports on his multi-year observations at the tragically named Lost Mountain in Eastern Kentucky, which suffered the ugly fate of mountaintop removal mining.

Reece made monthly visits to Lost Mountain, and offers a melancholy journal of the death of this once vibrant forested hill, as coal operators transformed a lush environment into a literal rubble heap. Reece also investigated the travails of the region's people. Coal companies are still harassing citizens who complain about their operations, while pocketed politicians turn a blind eye and give perennial false arguments about job creation and economic development. Meanwhile, the companies cut and run after their destruction is complete, taking their profits elsewhere while the locals suffer from toxic illnesses, flooding, mudslides, contaminated water, and the deepest poverty in America. The human hardship uncovered by Reece is both heartbreaking and maddening, and this book is a powerhouse look into issues of social justice, environmental protection, economics, and the exploitation of all of the above by unscrupulous operators for quick profits. The only problem with this book is the disappointingly weak conclusion, in which Reece attempts a general environmentalist philosophy that not only has been done a billion times, but is also far too diffuse to apply to the very specific Appalachian issues he covers in the rest of the book. But otherwise, this is one of the most important conservationist books of the year. [~doomsdayer520~]