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.


A history of soot, smoke, and power   October 24, 2003
SPM (Eugene, Oregon)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

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.


Excellent Read!   August 2, 2006
Michael Wantland (Justin, TX)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

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.


The original fossil fuel   January 15, 2007
Ilya (Redmond, WA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The story of a fossil fuel that still generates most of the world's (and the United States') electricity. It is much less flexible than oil, and much less (retro-)futuristic than uranium, produces a lot of air pollution (she has an early-20th-century photograph of a child afflicted with rickets, due to lack of sunlight exposure because of air pollution), yet unlike with oil and uranium, we aren't about to run out of it any time soon. Everybody wishes we could replace coal with renewable energy, but we just cannot generate as much electricity with renewables, however earnestly we might wish it. Read Energy at the Crossroads by Vaclav Smil for a far more serious treatment of the future of fossil and nonfossil fuels.