Appalachian Studies: Sustainability and Environmental Issues

Produced by a consortium of writers from West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, this book explores the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains and environmental devastation due to mountaintop removal coal mining. Speaking for and with the residents of the region, the authors maintain that the Appalachian Mountains must not be sacrificed for cheap energy.

Bringing Down the Mountains provides insight into how mountaintop removal (MTR) surface coal mining has affected the people and the land of southern West Virginia.

This illustrated volume, like the powerful documentary film on which it is based, gives voice to the growing chorus of protest against MTR mining in Appalachia through a collection of essays, oral history, commentary, and images.

Coal River is Shnayerson's account of this dramatic struggle. From courtroom to boardroom, forest clearing to factory floor, Shnayerson gives us a novelistic and compelling portrait of the people who risked their reputations and livelihoods in the fight against King Coal.

Confronting Ecological Crisis: University and Community Partnerships in Appalachia and the South addresses a wide range of cases that have presented challenges to local environments, public health, and social justice faced by the people of this region.

This book addresses Kentucky's most serious environmental threat -- mountaintop-removal mining and the destruction of the Cumberland Mountains.

Mountains of Injustice broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on communities in the Appalachian region, where the costs of cheap energy and cheap goods are actually quite high.

This book, breaking with old stereotypes and the strategies they spawned, proposes an alternative paradigm for development projects in Appalachian communities-one that is far more inclusive and democratic than previous models. Emerging from a critical analysis of the modern development process, the participatory development approach advocated in this book assumes that local culture has value, that local communities have assets, and that local people have the capacity to envision and provide leadership for their own social change.

Plundering Appalachia is a collection of photographs and essays detailing the grim realities of mountaintop removal mining: the effects of the blasting on the environment and the people and animals in its wake; the irreversible devastation of the natural landscape of Appalachia; how mountaintop removal is or is not regulated; and the true costs of the practice over time.

In this rich ethnography of life in Appalachia, Scott examines mountaintop removal in light of controversy and protests from environmental groups calling for its abolishment.

Like an old-fashioned hymn sung in rounds, Something's Rising gives a stirring voice to the lives, culture, and determination of the people fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal in the coalfields of central Appalachia.

Standing Our Ground: Women, Environmental Justice, and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal examines women’s efforts to end mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia.

We All Live Downstream is a multi-genre anthology of noted authors and young writers speaking out against mountaintop removal coal mining.

Black Diamonds charts the escalating drama in Appalachia over the alarming increase in large mountaintop coal mines.

In Burning the Future: Coal in America, writer/director David Novack examines the explosive forces that have set in motion a groundswell of conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia.

Beverly May and Terry Ratliff grew up like kin on opposite sides of a mountain ridge in eastern Kentucky. Now in their fifties, the two find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet's shrinking supply of natural resources?

To Save the Land and People is a history of the early grassroots efforts to stop strip mining in eastern Kentucky, where “broad form” deeds, signed at the beginning of the 20th Century, were used by coal operators to destroy the surface land without permission or compensation of the surface owner.