Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal Surface Coal Mining on Southern West Virginia Communities, 1970-2004

摘要

Since the publication of Harry Caudill's Night Cornes to the Cumberlands in 1963, most academics and social activists have emphasized the coal industry's negative impact on Appalachia and its people during the twentieth century. Caudill, John Gaventa, Ronald Lewis, and other scholars have argued that coal companies (with the help of mountain politicians and boosters) monopolized local political and economic power, often exploited their employees, and destroyed the environment.