Review by Booklist Review
"Black lung" evokes images of Depression-era miners with smudged faces, a relic of the past. But Hamby, a Pulitzer Prize--winner for the reporting on which this work is based, reminds us that it remains a constant threat. The harsh physical reality of black lung or pneumoconiosis is exacerbated by a benefits system that often pits unrepresented miners against powerful law firms. Hamby's story focuses on John Cline, a West Virginia lawyer who works tirelessly to represent men whose claims are appealed by wealthy mining companies. Miners often lose their benefits due to testimony by what seems to be a predictable line-up of radiologists. Cline's realizations about those experts and the medical information shared or not leads him on a mission to level the litigation field. It is a story of many setbacks and occasional success, and the detailing of medical reports and legal proceedings conveys a sense of the drawn-out process so many miners face. Hamby's research is extensive, and his investment in revealing the plight of the miners and their families in the hope of reform is clear.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
New York Times reporter Hamby debuts with a harrowing and cinematic account of the resurgence of black lung disease among coal miners in central Appalachia. According to Hamby, the disease killed 10,000 American miners between 1995 and 2004, while only 300 died during the same time period in cave-ins and other "singular mine catastrophes" that received much more media coverage. A 1969 law limiting the amount of coal dust allowed in mine air and establishing a federal program to administer workers' compensation and medical benefits to disabled miners should have "virtually eliminated" the illness, Hamby writes, but weakened unions, roll-backs of safety standards, and aggressive cost-cutting measures by coal company executives led to its reemergence in a "nasty new form." Hamby centers his story on West Virginia lawyer John Cline and his client Gary Fox, who returned to work after losing a previous federal benefits claim for advanced-stage black lung disease. Readers will cheer for Cline as he unravels the systematic corporate, medical, and legal malfeasance that prevented Fox and other miners from receiving their rightful benefits, and helps push the federal Labor Department to take action in 2016 to prevent coal companies from continuing to sabotage the claims process. This eloquent and sobering reminder of the human damage caused by the coal industry deserves to be widely read. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Hamby has compiled years of research into his story of coal miners in Appalachia who have endured black lung disease, and of their struggles to secure benefits from coal companies whose purposely hijacked safety procedures had led to their disability. (His prize-winning series of articles was originally published in 2013 as Breathless and Burdened by the Center for Public Integrity.) A law enacted in 1969 was supposed to control the coal and silica dust that, when inhaled, leads to black lung. Coal companies, however, found many ways to subvert the law, from rigging the dust-collection systems to ensure clean samples, to working with high-powered lawyers to make sure miners were denied benefits once they became disabled. Hamby uses ailing miners, their advocates, and the high-powered law firms and coal companies they battled to illustrate his David and Goliath story. The villains of the tale are Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship; the prestigious West Virginia law firm of Jackson Kelly; and physician Paul Wheeler of Johns Hopkins, who interpreted miners' medical scans. The hero is the miners' legal advocate, John Cline. VERDICT An engrossing read for those interested in social justice.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An investigative reporter takes on big coal in a tangled account of the battle for justice for miners stricken with lung disease. In 2011, while working as a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, Hamby often came into the orbit of "factory workers, men and women who'd lost loved ones in accidents, or survivors whose lives had been forever altered" by some malfeasance or another on the part of the bosses. Nowhere was this truer than in coal mining, where fires, cave-ins, and other occupational hazards were ever present but where the greater toll came in the form of lung disease. Countless lawsuits have been filed to obtain compensation for affected workers and, more often, their widows. However, as the author writes, "companies would rather spend stacks of cash fighting each case to the bitter end than pay the modest benefits to their former employees." It was up to "a small but scrappy coalition" of crusading attorneys, labor organizers, health care professionals, and citizen advocates to piece together evidence proving a pattern of deception: Coal companies would convince willing politicians (Donald Trump among them) that environmental regulations were too burdensome, commission doctors to cast doubt on miners' claims for compensation, and engage in other evasions. In the end, as the roster of victims of pulmonary illnesses grew as the decades passed, that coalition finally managed to push through legislation at the national level that, among other things, "would allow attorneys to collect partial fees as the claim progressed, rather than having to wait years for an uncertain payday at its conclusion," and made provisions for retesting of miners whose claims had been denied due to suspect medical claims on the part of the coal companies. Hamby's book is a touch long but full of memorable moments; it sits well in the tradition of advocacy journalism that includes recent books such as Carl Safina's A Sea in Flames and Karen Piper's Left in the Dust. A solid contribution to the literature of resource extraction and its discontents. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
