Dr. Michrina is to be commended for producing an insightful, sympathetic, and evocative study of the mining folk primarily of the central Pennsylvania county of Cambria. He also strives to document the general period of depression in the coal-mining industry, 1922-1942, and especially the traumatic events of the great strike of 1927 and resulting period without union representation and protection, 1927-1933. Unfortunately, while Dr. Michrina's academic jargon enhances this as a scholarly anthropological study, it hinders it as a heritage work which would be treasured by its coal-mining subjects and their friends and family, not to mention local historians. In an ironic twist, the non-academic reader must mine through the earth and rock of academic constructs to extract the coal seams of human emotion and remembrance. Dr. Michrina expresses some awareness of this and is honest in admitting to some guilt in recording and publishing personal information given by his subjects, who were also his frends and neighbors during the years of his "field work." He is also honest about the surprising results of his investigations. For example, he found a general lack of militancy directed against the coal companies, their chief oppressors, though there are still deep negative emotions directed against both the strike breakers and the Coal and Iron Police. The latter, called 'Pussyfoots,' performed the coal companies' dirty work, with state and local authorities turning a blind eye. These acts, including rape and murder, were intended to humiliate and control the captive populations of the coal company towns, while cheating them at the company store and keeping them in abysmal poverty. Dr. Michrina also found that while the miners maintained a strong work ethic, they tended to define themselves and seek happiness not in the work place but within the home and family. Aged survivors of these times also retain a general sense of economic insecurity and continue to practice frugality in most of their endeavors. He also found a strong sense of appreciation for both United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945, and United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) President John L. Lewis, 1920-1961, who are credited for restoring unionism, human rights, and some measure of dignity. This last element, the search for dignity, is the defining concept of the book and the chapter thereon is the finest and should be read above all else. This wonderful book, despite some flaws, is, along with Mildred Beik's THE MINERS OF WINDBER, a defining account of Cambria County's Roman Catholic coal miners of eastern and southern European ancestry. The Protestant coal miners of British and German descent still await their chronicler.

I read Barry P. Michrina's "Pennsylvania Mining Families" with great interest, since I am the son and grandson of a former coalminers and have some firsthand knowledge of the people and postindustrial-revolution landscapes of the geographical boundaries of the work, particularly Cambria, Indiana and Clearfield counties. I was very impressed with this work of anthropology that also functions secondarily as a not unimportant history of Central Pennsylvania, especially with regard to the Great Depression, the labor movement including the aftereffects of the Great Coal Strike of 1927, and the harscrabble lives of the coal-minging families of the time. Through his interviews with mostly old folks, including wives and also sons, who remember the dangers and vicissitudes of mining work -- unsafe shaft timbers, shooting coal with dynamite and the like -- Michrina sketches quite thoroughly a vanished and rough way of life. Moreover, by documenting the violence caused by strikebreakers and the quasiofficial Coal & Iron Police hired by uncaring and venal operators -- who ran roughshod over the locals in such small burgs as Carrolltown, Bakerton, Nanty Glo, Spangler and Mentcle -- Michrina explains how many immigrant and first-generation American families in the Alleghenies scraped by when food, money and employment were scarce. There's a melancholy that lingers in the witnesses' testimony. While the book affords you the chronology and methodology of coalmining in a specific time and place when Central Pennsylvania was vital to the industrial revolution, it also explains how disenfranchised many poor and immigrant families felt, how they were terrorized and how they had to fight all sides just to survive during a growth time in the proverbial land of the free and home of the brave. Today, the tipples have vanished, the driftmouths have bit closed up and the train tracks extracted, and the environmental degradation has been abated a bit from mining -- creeks don't run as orange as they used to into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. The book touches on this, too, again with verbatim memories. "Pennsylvania Mining Families" is a first-rate work of anthropology, a fascinating history and a significant contribution to the shelf on labor, particularly as it applies to coal operations. -- Jerry Roberts, author, "Rain Forest Bibliography" (McFarland & Company, 1999) "Mitchum: In His Own Words" (Limelight Editions, 2000)

I have research in coal and i want to build the coal chemistry laboratory in Indonesia.

This thin volume of 100 pages is loaded with first person interviews from people who were there through the era. Included are stories of immigration, working in the mines, living through the Great Depression, the conflicts with the United Mine Workers, management, strikes, etc. The narrative is told in the first person and gives one the feel of being there. Its nicely done. Oh, that we had a hundred more like it.

"Coal deposits of the United States are receiving much attention as the nation seeks solutions to its energy dilemma." [this was written in 1979!] "Coal has been part of the American scene for so long it has been taken for granted. Yet, although simple in concept, coal development is actually quite complex in detail. Furthermore, while much is known about coal, a great deal remains to be learned about the nature of this substance and how to use it in an efficient and effective manner....."

"...Part One covers the origin of coal and a description of its properties, together with an analysis of resources and recoverable reserves .... Part Two evaluates coal production ... Part Three considers coal use..."

The book was fascinating. It begins in the early 1940's in Chicago. Seth is a retarded young Jewish man. He is befriended by Robert Adams,a Black man who accepts him as a person, not a retarded person. The story is Seth's story. The varied and colorful people in his life, his experiences and how those around him are changed by him. He marries Robert's daughter Arley, and they go to live with her relatives in Vergennes, Ill. Seth seeks employment to work at the coal mine, entirely run by coloreds. It is a story of Seth's transformation from being retarded to being called by God (reluctantly) and becoming a leader. The language and some of the situations are are not only exreme, but bizarre. The story seems to encompass so many different levels, but I was disappointed in the ending,....or didn't understand the ending. However, I would definitely recommend it to someone looking for a "good" read. It's touching, it's spiritual and it's shocking!

"This masterful study charts the extensive common ground and telling differences between two widely separated coal-mining communities: Lanarkshire, in the Clyde Valley of southwest Scotland, and the northern Illinois coalfield that became a prime destination for skilled Scottish migrant miners in the mid-nineteenth century.

"Challenging the prevailing exceptionalist paradigm of labor history, John Laslett examines the social, economic, and political context of each of these communities in generous detail. He traces the progressive heightening of class consciousness as the coal industry evolved from skilled hand labor to mechanized extraction and the escalating hostility between miners and mineowners as their interests split along class lines. Examining the rise of militant industrial unionism in both areas, Laslett provides a sophisticated explanation of the American and Scottish miners' divergent approaches to collectivist solutions.

"Based on a profound knowledge of both communities, Colliers across the Sea tells a compelling story of democratic aspirations, community, and industrial transformation's human costs."

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"An exceptional work of scholarship. . . . Laslett's findings are important and will be widely noticed, debated, and assimilated into the labor history canon." - David Brody, author of Steelworkers in America

The coal mines of western Maryland were the first stop in America of my Welsh coal miner ancestors. When I started researching my family genealogy I was lucky enough t find Al Feldstein's "Coal Mining and Railroads of Allegany county, Maryland." Although only 38 pages long, it is packed with 135 old photographs with accompanying narratives. Many of the old photographs are from post cards in an era when the industrial development of the nation was a source of pride -- the inside of a coal mine and coal handling equipment; barge traffic on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal when it was a working canal carrying coal and other commodities down the Potomac to Washington D.C.; the National Road as it looked when it was an unpaved dirt road in 1907. Now in the year 2000, the coal mines are closed, the remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal are a National Park, and Interstate Highway 68 replaces the National Road. Thanks to the work of local historians like Mr. Feldstein it is possible to travel back in time and gain a sense of what the country was like during its early industrial development.

A very well written, intriguing novel. At first Luke hates Frankie, the mystery girl who seems to be able to switch stories and personalities at the drop of a hat, but then he begins to fall in love with her adventuresome spirit. As Luke learns more about Frakie's secrets, he finds himself involved in a life-threatening case of spy versus spy. This fast paced novel will leave reader begging for more while slipping in some historically accurate fact.

Ghosts and Other Plays is a seminal series of plays that combine humor with scathing social critique. Ibsen was not afraid to tackle weightier themes and taboos, in order to shock his audience out of their complacency. These plays demonstrate Ibsen's loathing of hyprocrisy, soulless institutions, the mandates of society which cause suffering (ie. Christianity). He has also been perceived as the figurehead for the emancipation of women from their traditional "place." That is not to say Ibsen is of dire seriousness or dry. His plays move quickly, the events in "Ghosts" for ex. occurring in less than a day. Ibsen is a great playwright whose works remain relevant and vital, in a consumerist society where people still remain afraid to defy cultural norms.

Michael Novak has taken a unique approach to telling the story of a tragedy that happened in Lattimer, PA in 1897. Most of the book is the fact-filled history of a day when about 400 unarmed Slovak anthracite coal miners from Harwood marched to Lattimer to call on Lattimer miners to join their strike. They were met by the seriff and a heavily-armed posse of citizens. As the sheriff tried to stop them, someone yelled "Fire!" and the ensuing slaughter is known as the Lattimer Massacre. Nineteen miners died, many shot in the back as they tried to flee, and many others were badly injured. At the following trial, in which the defense attorney played on the prejudices of the jury, the sheriff and posse were acquitted. Novak personalizes the story by including the fictional story of a Slovak miner in separate chapters, and while I think this feature is unnecessary, it does make the reader even more aware of the injustice done that day. After Lattimer, the miners realized fully that they needed a strong leader and a strong organization, and John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers was on the scene to take advantage of that fact. I found The Guns of Lattimer to be an unexpectedly moving book. Novak is not an historian. The book combines all the best features of well-researched history with social commentary. Novak is himself descended from Slovak immigrants so the reader is able to see this story from their point of view. It's biased, yes, but factual. I recommend it highly.