Author, historian, journalist, rambler, thespian Jeff Biggers weaves a tale of his Midwest home under siege by the rampant coal industry.

“Award-winning journalist and cultural historian Jeff Biggers takes us on a journey into the secret history of coal mining in the American heartland. Set in the ruins of his family’s strip-mined homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, Biggers delivers a deeply personal portrait of the largely overlooked human and environmental costs of our nation’s dirty energy policy over the past two centuries.”  (JeffBiggers.com.)

(Photo: JeffBiggers.com)

“This is a world-shaking, belief-rattling, immensely important book. If you’re an American, it is almost a patriotic duty to read it.”  (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.)

“As this fine book makes clear, coal has always and ever been a curse, poisoning everything and everyone it touches—right up to the climate on which we depend for our daily bread. What a story!”  (Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, and founder of 350.org)

“Jeff Biggers exposes the truth about coal in America—how the myth of “clean coal” destroys even family histories.  But Biggers is a long-time warrior in another fight—to stabilize climate and preserve a good life for young people.  Let us hope his message about dirty coal is read far and wide.”  (James Hansen, NASA Goddard Center, author of Storms of My Grandchildren, and world-renowned climatologist who has gotten himself jailed for climate justice.)

”Jeff Biggers has the keenest eye in the business, and he has a fine luminous voice to tell you what he has seen. Biggers manages to write 
like a poet, a historian, a naturalist and an adventurer.”  (Luis Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter.)

Biggers is also a part of the Coal Free Future Project, a touring troupe of artists who voice opposition to coal mining through theatre, music, and poetry.

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