Reckoning at Eagle Creek

November 9, 2009
Journalist Biggers tallies up the human cost of more than two centuries of coal mining in southern Illinois in an intimate, informative yet uneven book. Part historical narrative, part family memoir, part pastoral paean, and part jeremiad against the abuse of the land and of the men who gave and continue to give their lives to (and often for) the mines, the book puts a human face on the industry that supplies nearly half of America’s energy. Biggers excavates the history beneath the homestead at Eagle Creek where his family lived for eight generations. The displacement of the indigenous Shawnee, the hidden legacy of slavery, the bitter and bloody conflicts between miners and their bosses, and the environmental devastation wrought by the mines are detailed as part and parcel of the region’s coal-mining history—a history obliterated along with the mountaintops and clean streams scraped away by the miners’ steam shovels. Written in a personal and poetic style, the book suffers from poor organization, but it offers a rare historical perspective on the vital yet little considered industry, along with a devastating critique of the myth of “clean coal.”

November 15, 2009
Bloomsbury Review contributing editor Biggers (In the Sierra Madre, 2006, etc.) takes on Big Coal in this enriching history.

The author's forebears hailed from Eagle Creek, Ill., tucked away in the Shawnee National Forest and rich in several coal veins, now devastated by strip mining. By 1998 the last relation had sold what was left of the homestead to the encroaching coal company, which was relentlessly blasting the surrounding hills until it resembled"the scene of a crime." Biggers aims at the root of the wrong-headed decisions over the last two centuries, which allowed southern Illinois, called the"Saudi Arabia of coal," to reach such a desperate pass. The author moves between the big and the small picture. After noting that 42 to 45 percent of the U.S. electrical needs are supplied by coal and that over 40 percent of CO2 emissions come from coal-fired plants, he fashions affecting memories of his miner grandfather who died from black lung. Biggers addresses stereotypes of the hillbilly in these so-called Illinois Ozarks, which suffer from the same economic and social blights as Appalachia, and examines local efforts to organize a Shawnee Indian settlement, after they were driven out by the strip miners in the 1960s. He also excavates the lost early history of the use of African slaves and Native Americans to work the salt and mineral mines of Illinois and Missouri. Biggers delves into the fascinating legacy of the union organizers such as Mother Jones, John L. Lewis and Agnes Burns Wieck, the progressive movement and the explosion of mine accidents that accompanied the height of production in the 1910s and'20s, and he considers the oxymoron"clean coal" and the"boondoggle" FutureGen as further ways to disguise the"dirty realities" of coal.

An important look at the staggering human and environmental costs of mining.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2010
Journalist Biggers takes a look at coal and its role in the history of southern Illinois as well as its human and environmental costs. Biggers also tells a personal story as he chronicles the saga of his family's strip-mined homestead in an area that one day would be a part of the Shawnee National Forest. Hailed by politicians and businesspeople as the Saudi Arabia of coal, southern Illinois has a long record of natural resources exploitation. Biggers surveys the history of slave labor in the salt mines of the region, the early explorers who identified coal resources, the Native Americans who inhabited the region and were later pushed out, union activity in the minefields led by Mother Jones and John L. Lewis, the environmental degradation caused by strip mines, and the accidents and black-lung disease that killed miners. VERDICT A lot of history is presented here in a personal style by a cultural historian with a keen eye. A valuable read for followers of environmental history.Patricia Ann Owens, Wabash Valley Coll., Mt. Carmel, IL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2010
Ancestrally connected to hilly southern Illinois, Biggers combines memoir with labor and environmental history in this portrait of the region. Coal-rich, it has been extensively strip-mined; endowed with salt, it drew American settlers in the early 1800s, Biggers forebears among them. As a returning native, Biggers writes of his reconnection to the area through locally significant people, among them a man whose project is to revive the Shawnee presence, which permits Biggers to delve into the history of Indian expulsion from what is now the Shawnee National Forest and environs. Meeting others dedicated to preserving local history, such as a publisher of a local magazine, gives Biggers his entr'e to places and stories pertinent to the history of Illinois coal-mining industry. Alighting upon union organizers such as Mother Jones (whose grave is in Illinois), strikes, mining accidents, and sundry operations of mining companies, the author lists his many grievances with the coal-mining industry, both for past actions and for future plans, which generates stylistic energy that will impress readers of labor history and contemporary opponents of coal mining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)