Rating: 
Summary: Coal... a slightly different perspective
Review: A very good account of the history of coal, The author explains the basics, the different types of coal and how they are formed, The book progresses onto early societies and their treatment of the "burning stones". As can be expected the major part of the book is about the industrial revolution and the struggle of cities such as London and Pittsburg to maintain a habital city..The coal industry became "King Coal" and became the industrial lifeblood in many countries. A vital industry over which industrial sectors were formed and labor rights were gained. The Final chapters of the book deal with the pollution problems brought on by the burning coal. Two serious points are brought up;
1) Society can engineer away most of the pollution problems to the point where coal approaches almost perfect combustion. It will result in a much higher cost to utilize coal, and perfect combustion will still leave us with a massive Carbon dioxide output problem. Perhaps accelerating the global warming scenarios
2)The China question, as a large developing nation China is also heavily dependent on coal as a cheap and readily available energy source, and because of China's scarce resources it applies minimal polution control.
This combination does not bode well for the future. This reader thought the material was presented in a very professional manner. It was not a "the sky is falling" type of book. It is in fact a good book to obtain a balanced view. It explains how humans have lived with coal in the past and states that societies may have major decisions to make in the future.
Rating:
Summary: A Well balanced book
Review: A very good account of the history of coal, The author explains the basics, the different types of coal and how they are formed, The book progresses onto early societies and their treatment of the "burning stones". As can be expected the major part of the book is about the industrial revolution and the struggle of cities such as London and Pittsburg to maintain a habital city..The coal industry became "King Coal" and became the industrial lifeblood in many countries. A vital industry over which industrial sectors were formed and labor rights were gained. The Final chapters of the book deal with the pollution problems brought on by the burning coal. Two serious points are brought up;
1) Society can engineer away most of the pollution problems to the point where coal approaches almost perfect combustion. It will result in a much higher cost to utilize coal, and perfect combustion will still leave us with a massive Carbon dioxide output problem. Perhaps accelerating the global warming scenarios
2)The China question, as a large developing nation China is also heavily dependent on coal as a cheap and readily available energy source, and because of China's scarce resources it applies minimal polution control.
This combination does not bode well for the future. This reader thought the material was presented in a very professional manner. It was not a "the sky is falling" type of book. It is in fact a good book to obtain a balanced view. It explains how humans have lived with coal in the past and states that societies may have major decisions to make in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: lively and informative
Review: Barbara Freese has given us a marvelously accessible, general interest book with enough scholarly touches to satisfy academic minds. If you've ever wondered why London had that longtime reputation for "pea soup fogs", read Freese to find out. If you've pondered why England, a small, rainy island lacking many of the amenities of continental European countries,built a world empire and rose to prominence during the Industrial Revolution, read this entertaining history. Freese takes us on a journey through the extraction and uses of coal, and we will even visit a mine in rural China, seen through her sharp yet compassionate eyes.
"Coal: A Human History" deserves the excellent reviews it has received from publications like the New York Times Book Review. May it reach a wide audience both here and abroad. All readers from the age of 10 upward will find absorbing narrative, cleanly and articulately written. Kudoes!
Rating:
Summary: A history of soot, smoke, and power
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Little Black Book With A Great, Big Punch
Review: Between the covers of this brilliant little black book lie truths hard to stomach for some readers and easier for others. There is no doubt, regardless of the sophistry utilized by its proponents, that coal is POISON on a grand environmental, economic, sociological and epidemiological scale. Its propensity for developing dependency in a culture is akin to what nicoteine and heroin do on an individual level. Ms. Freese, with great scholarship and good will, holds this up for our own appreciation. She paints a seldom seen picture of the truly transformative power of coal in the rise of the industrial nation-state. She also demonstrates coal's ability to make monsters of men in its service. Even the medieval English Roman Church was in the "brimstone" business, only relinquishing power when Henry VIII boldly divested it from the monks. In the modern era, particularly in America, Ms. Freese, in relatively few words, shows us the devastating effects of coal on our country, as well as the lengths that corporations hopelessly addicted to it (think: Sid Vicious and heroin) will go in justifying the continuing, deliberate poisoning of America, Canada and others in the name of coal. Here in West Virginia, where overloaded monster coal trucks almost monthly kill innocents in their bid to get another ton from Point A to Point B; where majestic mountains millions of years old are levelled for a few meager tons of coal, the Industry has hired a beloved former football coach to enourage others to be "Friends of Coal." And the masses are signing up. They may be Friends of Coal, but in any analysis, as Ms. Freese so succinctly and eloquently points out, coal is no friend of theirs, no friend of ours, no friend of yours. As the industry touts in its latest ad campaign here: "COAL: It keeps the lights on." Sure it does. In the nation's funeral homes.
Rating: 
Summary: Coaldust
Review: Freese does a middling job with Coal: A Human History. The first part was well-written, certainly well-researched, and included many interesting facts about coal. The text takes a tangent in the latter half, however. Her critique is really an unsuccessful attempt to explore the effects of coal to contemporary material and cultural history - which is implied in her title. For example, when earlier she shares historical quotes of the sublime quality of coal fogs in urban areas and its modern allure, later she critiques its negative environmental impacts without engaging these earlier anecdotes - there's a troubling disconnect in her analysis between past and present. Freese has spliced a valid contemporary environmental critique onto a strong historical look at the effects of our relationship to coal on cultural and industrial development. I should direct my critique at her editors because she is an excellent writer and supports her theses well. I believe readers would be better served with two pieces - a more fully explored environmental history of coal, and a follow-up companion treatise on the contemporary situation.
Rating: 
Summary: A Grand History But Short Sighted On Research & The Future!
Review: I found the book excellent in some aspects of outlining the author's research of coal in human history, but she lost it with a poor line of investigation on the future of coal due to her bias in the book. I found her account on the history of coal in Britain, America and China very good. The Coal Lobby in England did attempt to keep coal supreme even though the British Navy knew oil burning Battleships were the future. British Petroleum was created for that very purpose and few in The City, (London Investors); felt oil had a future compared to coal. Yet, finally good common sense ruled over powerful political interest and investors and coal became a secondary source of energy but still important one. Although the author wrote in a very easy to read style, my own interest in studying this subject since boyhood left me wanting when she came to some very weak conclusions not supported with real facts or proper research, in my opinion. I cannot agree with her study whatsoever on her conclusions coal should be eliminated as an energy source in the future. The simple facts are not in dispute except in this book. At this time, nothing can produce the BTU's that Coal, Gas or Oil creates in order to run our current society. Her myopic prejudice views on this point are really astounding and bring into question her creditability as well as the book. Although everyone loves talking about the future of Hydrogen replacing our energy sources, talk is cheap compared to the currents needs coal actually supply. Hydrogen is very volatile and is burned off at refineries because of it explosiveness. All one has to do is remember the "Hindenburg" burning in New Jersey? Hydrogen Automobiles biggest set backs for the future will be to prevent explosions as cars run into each other unlike most accidents today. Any refinery worker will tell you they burn off the hydrogen that comes from refining oil and gas due to its volatility that makes it dangerous for storage in great quantities unlike coal. Additionally, colossal Hydrogen Power Plants are not an answer right now since they cannot extract Hydrogen from water or oil or gas without electrolysis requiring huge amounts of BTU's. This can only come from refineries or electric plants fueled by oil, gas and coal. Although Hydrogen is bountiful, it needs to be separated from the oxygen molecules in water or gas and that won't come without huge electric power doing it first and foremost from BTU's produced by coal. I have no problem with promoting solar, wind and hydrogen power when it is easily and cheaply able to produce the same amount of BTU's our society now requires from oil, gas and of course coal. Still, at this time the author's conclusions are simply in error. Today, coal is an important component of our energy needs all over the world out of necessity not some sinister scheme. Everyday in the Third World underdeveloped nations people die due to lack of proper energy sources, the people need heat and air conditioning to survive and prosper just like our societies do using coal today. Plus their economies cannot grow without such BTU's needed to run their businesses. But this author feels otherwise and concludes coal should be abandon at a time when large amounts of hydrogen are not available? So her pipe dream is not based on the required rational thinking of our current worldwide realities. Thus, the book is great history mixed with current fiction and dreams don't produce British Thermal Units needed to preserve life more than injuring it, similar to the book. The author does point out the negative health effects coal has created in our society, my own father died of Coal miner's pneumoconiosis, better known as black lung disease. But today's coalmines spray limestone on the coal before mining it to reduce coal dust today. There is no question coal can be mined safely today and is cleaner than ever before and can be cleaned even better in the future before abandoning it as the author proposes. One could burn this book but it would not provide the BTU's that a piece of coal would do and why I cannot recommend it for good reading at this time!
Rating:
Summary: Coal: The High Cost of the Good Life
Review: On the bookshelf, COAL: A HUMAN HISTORY promises to be another informative, fascinating study of a common substance along the lines of Mark Kurlansky's SALT: A WORLD HISTORY, and his delightful COD: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FISH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. But a rude awakening awaits the unprepared reader. We learn that the blessings of coal decidedly have been mixed. Freese's exhaustively-researched and authoritative book informs of the problems coal has caused from the time of its earliest use: In thirteenth-century London, efforts already were being made to deal with polluting coal smoke. Coal-related disease in the 19th century reduced lifespans, increased infant mortality and caused debilitating disease. Coal miners traded away their full lifespans for their jobs. Freese's descriptions of child labor abuses are appalling. More than a dozen photographs and illustrations effectively support the text: The photographs of ruined children are heartbreaking. Nor are the social costs neglected. For much of coal mining history, miners were serfs in effect if not in fact. Brutal suppression of miners' strikes, routine at the time the occurred, would not be tolerated today. Given little emphasis is the role of coal in building the modern world, and in particular, western society. Coal fueled the Industrial Revolution in England, leading to world domination by English-speaking peoples. Our wealthy society and high standard of living was built on cheap energy, primarily dervied from hydrocarbons. Right or wrong, the role of coal in creating our modern way of life, lightly treated here, warrants deeper exploration. In the end, Freese documents the terrible threat to our environment posed by modern-day coal-burning. It's painful to read yet another description of the over-use and destruction of our planet, particularly one that comes close to being strident. But read it we must if we are to change course before it's too late. Filled with fascinating detail and revelations, COAL: A HUMAN HISTORY is a compelling book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Just Another Jerremiad
Review: This book is not so much about coal, as it is about the environmental issues surrounding its use. I would have thought, though, that even a book of this sort would provide at least some of the basics of coal chemistry, giving some information on the chemical nature and reactions of coal, and the number of Joules per kg, perhaps. If you are looking for information of that sort, pass this jeremiad on by. Its approach is that you don't need to understand a technology in order to appreciate or regulate it. The book starts pretty well, giving some highlights of the history of coal's critical contributions to the industrial revolution, some of which will appeal even to those only tangentially concerned about the history of technology and how our present world came to be. The tale of the resistance of Londoners to the use of more efficient stoves over the smoky fireplace with its visual appeal, now superseded by the TV, was fine to read. Sorrowfully, there is not a word about the men who invented and developed the cast iron stove. The trials and tribulations of the men who enabled the transition of charcoal to coal in the production of iron is not to be found here. The important development of the coal-gas light, though described briefly, also totally neglects the chemistry, the men behind it and their heroic struggles. The production of coke is briefly described, but there is not even the briefest mention of the coal tar and the role it played in the development of the chemical industry. Although the transition of wood to coal burning locomotives is covered, the epical transition to the diesel is nowhere described. The properties and uses of the ash produced when coal is burned is also essentially ignored in this essay of environmental fantasies. The book does have for much of its length, a preoccupation with the smoke generated by burning coal, its noxiousness, and its mentions in the novels and memoirs of the times. But where is the discussion of the characteristics of smoke, its particle size and densities, its variance with the type of coal and how it is burned? Neglected again. The possibility of the conversion of coal to a liquid petroleum-like fuel, and the enormous amount of research surrounding this possibility is likewise unknown to this author. Long wall mining techniques which have done so much to improve mine safety is not worth a mention either. The author, an environmental solicitor and pleader, vaguely, feebly, and predictably argues for the complete replacement of coal by "renewable resources" such as solar power and windmills or something. Nuclear power is, in keeping with the usual dogma, dismissed in a sentence or two. The influence of this sort of discourse, while dominant for now among the media mongers and uplifters, will have little impact on our energy future. Our civilization, born in Northern Europe, has a record of steady and continuous improvement, and has a future that will be again filled with surprises and glories through the efforts of heroic engineers.
Rating:
Summary: Dirty Rotten Carbon Fuels
Review: This is a short book and, yes, it is written by a committed environmentalist. But it is also an extremely well-researched and well-structured tale, written by someone with a real understanding of the social consequences of energy consumption. "Coal" takes us to Britain, where coal had been a fuel source for centuries - leading to a plethora of genetic and medical problems, not least a slew of skin, lung and growth disorders in the cities (like London and Manchester) that burned coal in the greatest quantity. Author Freese then travels over to Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, where the American coal-mining industry started, and plots its development - also showing us the environmental effects of heavy industrial coal usage on an old steel town such as Pittsburgh. The final chapter is devoted to the Kyoto Protocols and other worldwide efforts to reach cleaner fuels. Concise and with huge contemporary relevance.
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