About the Book
Bob Wyss was a reporter and editor at the Providence Journal for thirty years, a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut for fifteen years, and is currently Professor Emeritus.
Black Gold
The Rise
by Bob Wyss (Author)
Price: $28.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Sep 2025
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9780520391796
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 25 b/w illustrations
Endowments:
About the Author
and Fall of American Coal
From Our Blog
Corrine Adams and Forcing Industry to Clean Up Its Act
Author Bob Wyss on the unexpected champion of clean air.
Table of Contents
"Black Gold provides an on-the-ground view of the extraordinary human toll of our country's determination to mine and burn coal as our primary source of energy and the avarice and greed of coal barons who profited on the backs of workers who were treated as expendable indentured slaves." Gina McCarthy, US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, 2013–2017
"Bob Wyss's Black Gold is a clear-eyed history of the American coal industry and wisely spotlights the immense political power long wielded by corrupt coal barons. Decades of carbon emissions, faux science, and dangerous lies have wreaked havoc on our planet and workers' health—all to keep polluters profiting handsomely."—US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
"Black Gold is simply the best environmental history ever written about the coal industry and the fascinating people who ignited America's industrial revolution. From a wild, naked barge ride down the Lehigh River in the early 1800s to the westward race between railroads and canals, the book traces the coal industry's struggle for great power and the miners' attempts to cope with the cost. Wyss achieves this with a solid historical narrative and unflinching details of outrageous labor conditions and life-threatening air pollution disasters. These include the company store 'Esau scrip' system, which involved secret sexual servitude, and the choking city smog episodes so intense that lanterns were needed in broad daylight. Written with all the insight, sympathy, horror, and humor that environmental history can evoke, Black Gold is a monumental contribution."—William (Bill) Kovarik, author and compiler of the Environmental History Timeline
"A terrific environmental historian who writes well too, Wyss has a lifetime of expertise in environmental issues and the journalists who cover them. If he wrote it, it's worth your time."—Dan Fagin, author of Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
"Bob Wyss's Black Gold is a clear-eyed history of the American coal industry and wisely spotlights the immense political power long wielded by corrupt coal barons. Decades of carbon emissions, faux science, and dangerous lies have wreaked havoc on our planet and workers' health—all to keep polluters profiting handsomely."—US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
"Black Gold is simply the best environmental history ever written about the coal industry and the fascinating people who ignited America's industrial revolution. From a wild, naked barge ride down the Lehigh River in the early 1800s to the westward race between railroads and canals, the book traces the coal industry's struggle for great power and the miners' attempts to cope with the cost. Wyss achieves this with a solid historical narrative and unflinching details of outrageous labor conditions and life-threatening air pollution disasters. These include the company store 'Esau scrip' system, which involved secret sexual servitude, and the choking city smog episodes so intense that lanterns were needed in broad daylight. Written with all the insight, sympathy, horror, and humor that environmental history can evoke, Black Gold is a monumental contribution."—William (Bill) Kovarik, author and compiler of the Environmental History Timeline
"A terrific environmental historian who writes well too, Wyss has a lifetime of expertise in environmental issues and the journalists who cover them. If he wrote it, it's worth your time."—Dan Fagin, author of Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
Reviews
"Describes coal’s central role in America’s culture, society and environment in sparking the Industrial Revolution and now contributing to the climate crisis."— The Seattle Times
— Nation“Provides readers an often-dramatic episodic overview of coal in American history, the great paradox between power and destruction that we could escape today.”
— Climate and Capitalism"Today coal combustion plays a major in deepening the global climate crisis, endangering still more lives.”
— Earth.org“An absorbing read. . . . Black Gold is a vital book for anyone seeking to understand American history over the past two centuries and how coal lay at the black heart of its most important industrial, social, and economic developments. Most of all, by helping the reader understand America’s coal-fired past, it offers a timely lesson for the future.”
— The Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences"The story that Black Gold chronicles could not be timelier nor told better."
— Yale Climate Connections“Journalist Bob Wyss describes how coal sparked the Industrial Revolution, powered railroads, and built urban skylines, while providing home comforts for families. . . . Now two centuries of carbon combustion endanger American lives and safety, a threat that remains unresolved. This is coal’s most enduring legacy; Black Gold is pivotal in helping us understand how we got here.”
— Well-Read Naturalist“Spanning such a wide range of interwoven subjects, this is a book that can be expected to be worthy of the attention of an equally wide ranging community of readers.”
— H-Net“Black Gold contributes nicely to the assemblage of approaches to environmental history, as well as the corpus of texts tackling the environmental, economic, and social histories of coal. . . . Wyss fulfills his stated goal of illuminating how coal shaped and interconnected lives, events, technologies, and commodities in the United States.”
— CHOICE“Black Gold offers an engaging narrative of coal’s place in US industrialization and its human and environmental costs. The prose is lively and accessible, and the episodic, character-driven structure invites students to take a glimpse of subjects they might otherwise find forbidding.”
"Black Gold provides an on-the-ground view of the extraordinary human toll of our country's determination to mine and burn coal as our primary source of energy and the avarice and greed of coal barons who profited on the backs of workers who were treated as expendable indentured slaves." Gina McCarthy, US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, 2013–2017
"Bob Wyss's Black Gold is a clear-eyed history of the American coal industry and wisely spotlights the immense political power long wielded by corrupt coal barons. Decades of carbon emissions, faux science, and dangerous lies have wreaked havoc on our planet and workers' health—all to keep polluters profiting handsomely."—US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
"Black Gold is simply the best environmental history ever written about the coal industry and the fascinating people who ignited America's industrial revolution. From a wild, naked barge ride down the Lehigh River in the early 1800s to the westward race between railroads and canals, the book traces the coal industry's struggle for great power and the miners' attempts to cope with the cost. Wyss achieves this with a solid historical narrative and unflinching details of outrageous labor conditions and life-threatening air pollution disasters. These include the company store 'Esau scrip' system, which involved secret sexual servitude, and the choking city smog episodes so intense that lanterns were needed in broad daylight. Written with all the insight, sympathy, horror, and humor that environmental history can evoke, Black Gold is a monumental contribution."—William (Bill) Kovarik, author and compiler of the Environmental History Timeline
"A terrific environmental historian who writes well too, Wyss has a lifetime of expertise in environmental issues and the journalists who cover them. If he wrote it, it's worth your time."—Dan Fagin, author of Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
"Bob Wyss's Black Gold is a clear-eyed history of the American coal industry and wisely spotlights the immense political power long wielded by corrupt coal barons. Decades of carbon emissions, faux science, and dangerous lies have wreaked havoc on our planet and workers' health—all to keep polluters profiting handsomely."—US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
"Black Gold is simply the best environmental history ever written about the coal industry and the fascinating people who ignited America's industrial revolution. From a wild, naked barge ride down the Lehigh River in the early 1800s to the westward race between railroads and canals, the book traces the coal industry's struggle for great power and the miners' attempts to cope with the cost. Wyss achieves this with a solid historical narrative and unflinching details of outrageous labor conditions and life-threatening air pollution disasters. These include the company store 'Esau scrip' system, which involved secret sexual servitude, and the choking city smog episodes so intense that lanterns were needed in broad daylight. Written with all the insight, sympathy, horror, and humor that environmental history can evoke, Black Gold is a monumental contribution."—William (Bill) Kovarik, author and compiler of the Environmental History Timeline
"A terrific environmental historian who writes well too, Wyss has a lifetime of expertise in environmental issues and the journalists who cover them. If he wrote it, it's worth your time."—Dan Fagin, author of Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation