During my twenties I served in the United States Navy, and what I experienced there—next to nothing compared to what the characters in the below-mentioned books experience—was traumatic enough to leave me wandering for a dozen years, hitchhiking, traveling around the country in search of some way to get a grasp on my experience. The vestiges of that experience still remain, and much of my writing has been an attempt to understand it.
Simply a beautifully written book. Few writers can accomplish so much and get across so much in as few pages as Robert Olmstead. This is a story of the Civil War, of a son and a father, of a mother and a son. The ending of this novel is among the best I’ve ever read.
When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable: she sends her only child to find his father on the battlefield and bring him home.
At fourteen, wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety—blue on one side, gray on the other— Robey thinks he's off on a great adventure. But not far from home, his horse falters and he realizes the enormity of his task. It takes the gift of a powerful and noble coal black horse to show him how to undertake the most…
My experience as a teacher of history, literature, art, and music placed me in close contact with young people and their friendships, passions, worries, and joys. Then I had children of my own. Teaching and parenting also made me more deeply aware of my own youth, and of the importance of relationships in the formation of the young. Each of my chosen books highlights these qualities through beautifully crafted prose. Their stories, characters, and settings have a special place in my heart, and have inspired me as a writer. And whenever I reread them, I realise I still have a lot to learn.
A touching and intimate account that brings me to tears every time I read it. I love how its simple narrative is infused with poetry and how you can hear the gentle Welsh lilt.
All this brings the story to life, and makes its hopes, joys, and tragedies so very poignant.
All six episodes of the BBC adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's classic novel set in a Welsh mining community at the turn of the century. Gwilym (Stanley Baker) and Beth Morgan (Siân Phillips) work their hardest to provide for their children, but these are the years before the unions improved the miner's lot, and times are very hard indeed. However, the community in which the Morgans live is a close-knit one, and they are grateful for all the help they receive, especially from the Rev. Gruffydd (Gareth Thomas).
I became a climate activist and later a researcher after my sister and her family lost their home in the Black Saturday fires of 2009 in Victoria. Their bravery and survival is a daily reminder for me, that climate change is upon us, and we are fighting for our lives as well as our children and future generations. Because my research has been focused on colonialism and race their story has opened many questions for me around the history of colonialism and whether it was coal-fired. I’m thinking about what it means for settlers to lose their homes on stolen land, and whether this recognition could prompt us to rethink land ownership, custodianship, and coexistence.
Barak’s history of fossil fuels in the Middle East and the colonial extraction and incursion of British corporations throughout the region hugely clarifies the interdependence of imperialism and fossil fuels.
We’re shown how coal's imperial infrastructure presaged the geopolitics of oil causing recurring war, violence, exploitation, and more recently climate change. This powerful book thoroughly convinced me that the history of Empire is indelibly a history of carbonisation.
The Age of Empire was driven by coal, and the Middle East-as an idea-was made by coal. Coal's imperial infrastructure presaged the geopolitics of oil that wreaks carnage today, as carbonization threatens our very climate. Powering Empire argues that we cannot promote worldwide decarbonization without first understanding the history of the globalization of carbon energy. How did this black rock come to have such long-lasting power over the world economy?
Focusing on the flow of British carbon energy to the Middle East, On Barak excavates the historic nexus between coal and empire to reveal the political and military motives behind…
I grew up in West Virginia and believed you had to leave the region to write. Only after I’d published my first novel did I discover books like these and many more. I have become a wide reader in our literature, with a special interest in novels that both tell the stories of individuals and families and explore the connection between resource extraction and poverty. It’s also a pleasure to read about regional successes as well as losses.
West Virginian Denise Giardina’s brilliant Great American Novel is the fictionalized account of the mine wars of 1920 and 1922 in the coal fields of southern West Virginia.
I love it for the mix of the lives of real (albeit fictional) human beings with actual history and allusions to labor figures and other American political struggles and strikes. Giardina, an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church, grew up herself in a mining camp, and gives us a perfect introduction to the struggles of industrial workers of central Appalachia– and a grand epic of American life.
“Brilliant, diamond-hard fiction, heartwrenching, tough and tender.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy—land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women.
Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C.J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rose Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines.
I write fictional, contemporary gay mysteries, but I prefer to read facts and I enjoy the research that accompanies my storytelling. Industrial history and geology fascinate me, so it isn’t any wonder that I set my tales in the Durham hills of northeast England. As some of my videos in the link show, there are many abandoned quarries, lead and coal mines in the area. I can become emotional when I think about the socio-political history of mining and quarrying. My latest tale reflects my interest in quarrying and my five recommendations reflect a passion that has its roots in the UK’s once thriving, now defunct, coal industry.
Another book that features sons. Lawrence’s father was a Nottinghamshire coal miner and there are many little details in the book that attest to the author’s knowledge of nineteenth-century mining family life. I’ve chosen Sons and Lovers because, to me, it asks an unanswerable question and so the tale has stayed in my mind. Did Lawrence despise his own father as much as fictional Paul, influenced by Paul’s mother, despises Walter Morel? I’d love to know. I sympathised with Gertrude, the wife and mother, but I felt so sorry for Walter. He worked hard in a terrible job. He became old and tired before his time. Yes, he was uncouth and illiterate, but I felt he deserved some praise, not contempt.
Sons and Lovers is the critically-acclaimed story of Paul Morel, a second son who must discover his own identity in the shadow of his mother’s overwhelming presence and influence. A budding artist, Paul must choose between his responsibility to his mother and his desire to explore the world and fall in love. Faced with the chance for a future with two different women, Paul must decide what he truly wants and whose opinion—his own or his mother’s—matters most.
HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading…
I am a historian of early modern Europe, especially 16th- and 17th-century England, and my work pulls together threads from different historical disciplines, including political history, the history of science and technology, and environmental history. I am fascinated by the ways that human history is intimately linked with the environment, and I am most interested in how early modern European states and empires worked to understand, manage, and profit from the natural world, especially with respect to using and conserving natural resources such as water, wood, and wildlife. I have chosen books that explore these issues in innovative and exciting ways.
A fascinating look at the use of coal as a main fuel source in early modern London, the fearsome pollution that resulted from it, and efforts to understand and mitigate the effects of that pollution.
I think the most impressive aspect of this book is how many different approaches Cavert takes in examining his topic—political and legal history, history of science, social and economic history, even literary criticism. He argues that London was the first “modern” city in that it was the first to rely heavily on burning fossil fuels to provide the energy that powered its early industrial economy.
The Smoke of London uncovers the origins of urban air pollution, two centuries before the industrial revolution. By 1600, London was a fossil-fuelled city, its high-sulfur coal a basic necessity for the poor and a source of cheap energy for its growing manufacturing sector. The resulting smoke was found ugly and dangerous throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leading to challenges in court, suppression by the crown, doctors' attempts to understand the nature of good air, increasing suburbanization, and changing representations of urban life in poetry and on the London stage. Neither a celebratory account of proto-environmentalism nor a declensionist…
I am a privileged individual of our Western society, with access to a good education, living away from hunger and despair. Am I wealthy? Far from it. I am amid that middle class where working hours are well understood and spare time is fully enjoyed. I have been a consultant to businesses of all sizes and I have learned closely how the wheels turn, how in order to produce anything, always someone and something is crushed and squeezed. Profit on one side and destruction and poverty on the other one. Throughout time, I have met people from various countries and understood the value of a multicultural world, which I defend.
I was very young when I first read this book. Many years later I took it back from the shelf and went through its pages with older eyes.
The reality portrayed by Émile Zola in the 19th Century is quite brutal. The coal miners back then – with their struggle for life, excess work, permanent fatigue, lack of knowledge and understanding, contrasted by the careful calculations and comfort of their masters – mirror miners and other workers today.
Greed on one side, poverty on the other regarded as normal. The very few with enough wit to overthrow the injustice were silenced, as it happens today at the productive facilities of the capital.
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
I write about topics I’m curious about. When a friend’s daughter converted to Islam that piqued my interest in the religion. I started researching Islam, not entirely sure of where the journey would take me. Around that same time, I saw a picture in my minister’s office of a Syrian refugee and her young son. They held a handwritten sign that said, WE ARE FROM SYRIA, CAN YOU HELP US? I started writing a story about a Christian girl whose church is helping a Syrian refugee family. To enrich the book, I sought a Muslim coauthor to tell half of the story. Together, we read LOTS of books by collaborators.
Same Sun Here is told by pen pals Meena and River in their letters to each other. Meena is an Indian immigrant living in New York City. River lives in the coal mining region of Kentucky. I am from a rural area myself so was especially drawn to River’s voice and the rural setting.
“Even better than reading a refreshingly honest story by one talented writer is reading one by two such writers.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Pen pals Meena and River have a lot in common: fathers forced to work away from home to make ends meet, grandmothers who mean the world to them, and faithful dogs. But Meena is an Indian immigrant girl living in New York City’s Chinatown, while River is a Kentucky coal miner’s son. With honesty and humor, Meena and River (each voice distinctly articulated by a separate gifted author) bridge the miles between them, creating a friendship…
Ruth Goodman is well known in the UK for such programs
as "Tudor Farm," where she recreates daily life and work in the past. I love
watching her: she’s bubbly, enthusiastic and funny. Her book doesn’t
disappoint.
The Domestic Revolution of the title is the change-over from burning
wood or peat in the home to burning coal, which happened earlier in the UK than elsewhere.
Are you thinking, as I
did, that it didn’t make
much difference? Wrong! Read this book, and you’ll find that it changed almost everything:
architecture, furniture, pots and pans, the food cooked.
A fascinating book for anyone interested in everyday life in the past.
'Ruth is the queen of living history - long may she reign.' Lucy Worsley
A large black cast iron range glowing hot, the kettle steaming on top, provider of everything from bath water and clean socks to morning tea: it's a nostalgic icon of a Victorian way of life. But it is far more than that. In this book, social historian and TV presenter Ruth Goodman tells the story of how the development of the coal-fired domestic range fundamentally changed not just our domestic comforts, but our world.
The revolution began as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth…
Ever since I was small, I’ve been fascinated by weather magic. Whenever we visited our Shetland family, I’d spend the last few days trying to conjuring fog, to ground the planes, and keep us there a little longer. Reader, it worked! My parents were not happy. I was over the moon and thereafter, utterly convinced that I had magical powers. This is a list of magical middle grade books guaranteed to delight anyone who’s ever been told they have their head in the clouds. Up with sky gazing, daydreaming, and chasing rainbows!
This is an edge-of-the-seat mystery that will keep you reading long past bedtime. The story begins in a grimy underworld beneath the Battersea power station, but rapidly expands into the sky. I’d recommend this book to readers who like their magic with a thrill—the stakes are high and it’s an absolute page-turner. I particularly love the fact that Alma (a friendly ghost who befriends the main character), can change the shape of clouds. How many hours have I spent trying to do that through sheer willpower!
'A superbly inventive and magical debut' Piers Torday
'Beautifully written and filled with unforgettable characters ... a diamond of a book' Ross MacKenzie
'Utterly original, thrilling, strange and cracking good fun ... every chapter is packed full of wild imagination' Liz Hyder
Catch the wind. Find your freedom.
A riveting, magical adventure set deep underneath a richly reimagined London for 9+ readers.
Kidnapped and forced to shovel coal underneath a half-bombed, blackened power station, 12-year-old Luke's life is miserable. Then, he discovers he can see things others can't. Ghostly things. Specifically, a ghost-girl named Alma. Alma, who can ride clouds…
