“Scathing exposé of the coal industry… [Galuszka’s] reporting is impressive, from the painstakingly reconstructed hours leading up to the disaster, to the starkly silhouetted Donald Blankenship, the cost-cutting, anti-environmentalist former head of Massey Energy.” 
The New York Times Book Review

“The 2010 tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine resonated nationwide and has resulted in a great deal of soul-searching among Americans over the price paid for our dependence on “Big Coal”… Beyond the mining catastrophe at its core, this is a book about working America and how one industry has conquered a landscape’s body and soul. Bracing, powerful, and pertinent, this is a timely and clarion call for myth-busting change.”
Booklist (Editor’s Choice 2012. Starred Review)

“A fascinating―and infuriating―account of the deadliest industry on earth. Deadly for its workers and the people unfortunate enough to live near its mines, but deadlier still for the planet. You can’t understand our moment in time without understanding the coal industry”
Bill McKibben, New York Times Bestselling author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“Appalachia may be blessed with the ‘world’s best metallurgical coal,’ but as journalist Galuszka’s powerful book shows, this coal is both ‘a curse and a prize…’ He convincingly excoriates the safety record of Massey Energy and its controversial former CEO, Don Blankenship… Drawing on his personal experience of Appalachia, Galuszka offers a sympathetic but unsentimental portrait of the region’s people and their struggles.”
Publishers Weekly

“Scrupulously researched … Galuszka’s thoroughness provides readers a clear sense of the complex class issues at play in Appalachia and the difficult politics within coal-mining communities; he is attuned to both the lives of the miners and the maneuvers of the energy industry…. A disturbing and pessimistic narrative documenting little-known problems of fossil-fuel dependence.”
Kirkus Reviews