Cultural historian Jeff Biggers takes us to the dark amphitheatre ruins of his family's nearly 200-year-old hillside homestead that has been strip-mined on the edge of the first federally recognized Wilderness Site in southern Illinois. In doing so, he not only comes to grips with his own denied backwoods heritage, but also chronicles a dark and missing chapter in the American experience: the historical nightmare of coal outside of Appalachia, serving as an exposé of a secret legacy of shame and resiliency. 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 entrée 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. --Gilbert Taylor "...offers a rare historical perspective on the vital yet little considered industry, along with a devastating critique of the myth of `clean coal.' " --Publishers Weekly, November 9, 2009 "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 --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love "Nobody writes about Appalachia like Jeff Biggers. His voice is a swirl of history and memory, of fact and analysis, of hillbilly wisdom and journalistic outrage. Reckoning at Eagle Creek is bigger and brawnier than a memoir or cultural chronicle--it's a passionate howl from the dark heart of American coal country."--Jeff Goodell, author, Big Coal --Jeff Goodell, author, Big Coal "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 --James Hansen, NASA Goddard Center, author of Storms of My Grandchildren James Hansen, NASA Goddard Center, author of Storms of My Grandchildren James Hansen, NASA Goddard Center, author of Storms of My Grandchildren "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 --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet "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