Long before the disastrous impact of coal on the global climate was well understood, it was already wreaking havoc on human lives in the United States – even as it powered America’s dramatic industrial transformation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Black Gold charts the individual stories of the people who wrought that transformation, those who suffered from it, and the surprising crusaders seeking to bring about its decline.
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Related in non-chronological, self-contained chapters, the book opens with a dramatic account of the power coal held over the United States at its peak: when the threats of union action just after the second World War forced President Harry S. Truman to intervene directly lest the country’s economy collapse.
From this beginning, the author moves to a terrifying scene of a deadly coal mine disaster in southern Illinois (later immortalized in a song by Woody Guthrie). It would not be the first time – nor the last – that coal companies, bent on extraction at any cost, would ignore the safety of the people who unearthed it and those who suffered from its use.
While the book is purportedly about coal as a fuel, its true focus is the people at the coalface of the industry.
Always through the eyes of individuals directly involved, the author explores the origins of coal and its beginnings as a fuel. The reader accompanies scientists who explore the era hundreds of millions of years ago when coal was formed, a time when five-foot centipedes and giant dragonflies held sway. From there, we learn how early promoters of coal dug it out from sources close to the surface and strove to promote it as an alternative to wood.
It is extraordinary to learn that coal almost didn’t make it. While coal had been used as a fuel in small quantities for many thousands of years, the difficulty of getting anthracite to light up (even though it burns much longer than wood) stymied the coal sellers who sought to bring it into the mainstream of American households and factories.
The author makes it clear how inextricably coal is entwined with American history over the past two centuries – this is more of a history text than an environmental screed. In particular, he shows how the industries of coal, steel, and railroads grew interdependently: railways needed steel for tracks and bridges, steel needed coal for its manufacture, and coal needed railways for transport. For this reason, much of the central section of the book traces the companies and men who led and powered these industries. While we learn stories of the executives in charge (Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Alexander Cassatt, and other well-known names), the author never forgets to bring the reader back to the workers who suffered from coal’s reign, living in slums and dying in droves.
Midway through the book, the first clues of coal’s other victims begin to emerge: those who endured the horrors of coal smoke. And it is here that we learn about a surprising group of environmental activist pioneers: the Salt Lake City Ladies Literary Club. Women had long suffered from the worst effects of coal smoke in the home, but lacked political power in 1913 when their club turned its attention to coal. Nevertheless, they were behind the first anti-pollution movement targeting coal smoke. This forms the first clue of coal’s eventual downfall and the roots of what today is called environmental justice. It took time: only in 1940 did the first anti-pollution legislation with teeth take hold, in St. Louis, Missouri. This became a turning point in the history of American coal.
As such, the final third of the book lays out the steps towards coal’s decline, which today seems to have been inevitable but would have once been unthinkable. It is a decline marked throughout by environmental damage (including that from acid rain) and human deaths: those lost in anti-union massacres, from black lung, and in mining catastrophes.
Only in the final chapters does the author mention the words “climate change”. Those taking this long-term view have harassed and hampered at every turn, including the scientists in Hawaii who traced atmospheric CO2 concentrations to the foes of a coal export terminal in Washington state. The author also touches on the efforts of entrenched interests to sow doubt and resist any public policy shift. The book was completed before the American presidential election in 2024, and thus does not include the nation’s recent backsliding on coal policy.
Overall, the book’s journalistic style makes for an absorbing read: each of the chapters in the book can be read independently, in or out of order. Additionally, the book’s relentless focus on individuals and families brings their stories to vibrant life. Their photos, no matter how obscure, are included throughout the book, a reflection of the intensive research efforts of the author. The references and index attest to these efforts – whether it is the minutes of a 1913 ladies’ club meeting, steel patents from the 1850s, or verbatim quotes from black steelworkers in Pennsylvania in the last century.
This journalistic approach sometimes leaves out more detailed information that might have added context: for example, an exploration of the technical aspects of how coal was replaced by other fuel sources throughout the 20th century. And even given the impossibility of untangling the coal-steel-rail triumvirate, the author’s lengthy discussion of railroads (including a long history of Penn Station in New York) sometimes exceeds what is needed. Furthermore, while the book never makes claims to focus on anything other than coal’s American story, one wonders whether this history occurred in such total national isolation as it appears here.
Black Gold is a vital book for anyone seeking to understand American history over the past two centuries and how coal lay at the black heart of its most important industrial, social, and economic developments. Most of all, by helping the reader understand America’s coal-fired past, it offers a timely lesson for the future.
Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal
Bob Wyss
2025, University of California Press, 312pp
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