I enjoyed this book. It reminded me of Dopesick by Beth Macy and Amith & Prosperity by Eliza Griswold. The author does a great job of weaving science and law through a narrative of injustice and poor health caused by detrimental working conditions in Appalachia's coal mines. I recommend the audiobook.

What I liked:

I like books that can teach me something. I like books about labour and justice. I like books where the people actually affected are on centre stage. This book has all of that.

What I didn't like:

There's an epilogue with a follow-up from some of the main people in the book, but I really wish more time had been paid to the effect of some of the big legal changes.

Overall:

I have to be completely honest, I was under the very mistaken impression that black lung was basically something from the past. Chris Hamby has set me straight, though before writing this he says he was under that mistaken impression as well. It's an important topic, and it's crazy just how well it has been kept hidden all this time.

This book is such an interesting read! The author provides plenty of historical information about the profession of coal mining in W Virginia as well as the people. This makes it easier to understand the struggle that Gary Fox and John Cline endure as they work to fight the coal industry for protections to prevent black lung disease as well as adequate care for those who are sick. The author did a great job acquiring perspectives from various people in Appalachia which contribute to the robust storyline that draws the reader into this community, caring about an issue that many in America aren't impacted by.

As someone with family members in Appalachia, I'm thankful for this author's time and research on the topic. His portrayal of the residents as hard working and forgotten was touching and really hit home for me.

So fascinating an informative book reporting at its best.Opening our eyes to the tragedy in Appalachia.Perfect for class room ,book club discussion.#netgalley #littlebrown.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

What a fabulous read! Being from Appalachia, I do not trust many people who write about the area where I´ve spent the majority of my life. When I read the description of this book, I was cautiously hopeful. To be honest, the cover -- with its stereotypical depiction of a desolate area in bland black and white -- did not relieve my reluctancy. From the first paragraph, however, I was hooked. Chris Hamby´s Soul Full of Coal Dust is an intriguing read that will certainly appeal to those of us who have witnessed and experienced the coal mining way of life. Hamby´s research details the legal battles and political policies that impacted generations of miners who have suffered from Black Lung. To those who know little about the subject, the book offers a critical look at a search for justice. Though Hamby writes a thorough history of the issue, the narrative structure makes this book anything but dull. Instead, the story of the two men at the heart of Hamby´s investigative journalism is extremely engaging. He expertly weaves stories of the people who rose up to fight against powerful coal companies backed by political authority spanning decades. Hamby offers an empathetic examination of miners who sacrificed their health to build a country that, in turn, not only neglected them but actually waged an ongoing war against them. Unlike many books written about Appalachia (especially by ¨outsiders,¨) this one captures the true sense of miners and their family members. Hamby has a genuine understanding of the ongoing complexities facing this region. This is the view that is often overlooked by writers who oversimplify the men and women of a beautiful area often exploited for its abundant natural resources. I highly recommend this important read!
I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

As rich (in description) as the seams of coal that are responsible for the wealth and heartbreak that fill its pages, Soul Full of Coal Dust emphasizes the dangers wedded to mining from the opening pages. As an Appalachian resident, I confess that I went into this one expecting a reiteration of the sad truths of which I am already aware. Hamby does touch on Appalachian legacies: ecological beauty and poverty, fierce struggles and opioid addiction- but he writes like an angry poet who has seen something beloved done wrong and he made me look at my home differently - from the roads, which he writes this way: "the two-lane blacktop of Route 85, entering the rural county’s circulatory system: road, river, and rail line twisting in tandem—arteries bringing metal and men, veins sending fuel and waste," to the very people who live here. Hamby's work traces the rise of black lung as a threat to miners - its disappearance (i.e. cover up) its resurgence, and the ways mining still impacts Appalachia today. Of black lung, he writes many impassioned passages, but this will serve as an example: But even this record of violent death pales in comparison with the toll from the disease that slowly steals miners’ breath. For the poor souls taken by this scourge, there are no news stories commemorating the anniversary of their sacrifice, no public apologies to grieving widows, no rallying cries of “Never again!” They simply suffocate in a slow-motion disaster that plays out over years in homes tucked deep in mountain hollows." I think this work is very important to understanding this area of the country and will be of interest and value to those concerned with labor laws, environmental protections (and lack thereof) and the labors we ask others to undertake (underground in this case) for our comfort and ease.

Gripping investigative journalism. Like Erin Brocovitch or whistle blower stories, this could be easily translated to a movie. Wonderfully written and reported.

I’m a son of West Virginia, and I’m the son of a coal miner. So, when I saw the book Soul Full of Coal Dust available as an ARC from NetGalley, I pounced on it. From the first page to the last, I found myself swept up in the story that Christ Hamby, a journalist at The New York Times, was telling. This is a story of the extraordinary men and women of my home state who have had to wage a decades-long war to get the benefits they deserve from an industry hell-bent on exploiting every resource in West Virginia, including its people. In particular, they have struggled to gain compensation for black lung, a terrible lung disorder that is as much a part of coal mining as the hardhat.
Hamby has an instinctive grasp of how to get to the real meat of the story, while also giving the reader the kind of context necessary to understand why this issue is so pressing. We learn, for example, of the truly terrible physical toll that coal mining takes on the bodies of those who work both underground and aboveground, of how the dust from coal causes horrific damage to the lungs of almost anyone who works in that environment. We learn of the ways in which the coal industry and its cronies in both the government and in the medical and legal professions have steadily worked to discredit miners and to do everything in their power to keep from having to pay them the compensation they are owed. We see some of the powers that be that have been especially active in solidifying the industry’s power over the region, including Don Blankenship (who ran his company, Massey Energy, like a feudal fief) and Jackson Kelly (the powerful law firm that frequently represents the coal industry in its attempts to deny benefits.
The real beating heart of the book, however, are the people, the proud men and women of West Virginia, whether native or transplants, who spend so much of their lives trying to do the right thing. These are men like Gary Fox, a coal miner who worked in hazardous conditions so that he could support his wife and daughter, even when doing so put his own health at risk. These are men like the lawyer John Cline, who has devoted his life to fighting for miners and their benefits. Men like this, of course, are part of the broader political situation in West Virginia (and Appalachia more generally), but in Hamby’s capable hands we get an intimate view of these people, seeing them as human beings who are just trying to do what is right. The book is very much a David and Goliath story, and it is men like Gary and John who are the Davids, taking on the behemoths of both the coal industry and their powerful lawyers. They don’t always succeed, but when they do it’s impossible not to feel caught up in the sense of triumph over the forces of corporate greed.
It is, in some important ways, a very difficult book to read, but that’s precisely what makes it so important. It’s very easy these days to mock those in Appalachia — particularly West Virginia — and I’m not entirely innocent of that habit (I have a very complicated relationship with my homeland). However, as Hamby demonstrates, it is definitely true that the coal industry has gone out of its way to make many people in West Virginia utterly dependent on them, only to deny them the very compensation they were promised for literally putting their lives on the line for the company. This has included pulling out all the stops, and it’s very revealing that so few of those involved with supporting the companies’ efforts were willing to speak to Hamby.
Soul Full of Coal Dust thus identifies one of the most puzzling contradictions about Appalachian life, a conundrum that continues to puzzle many outsiders (and many insiders, such as myself). How is it possible that, given everything that they know to be true about the duplicity of the big coal companies, that they would continue to mortgage their bodies and good health to these same employers? The reasons are as complicated as the people of Appalachia, but as Hamby demonstrates it’s in part an issue of pride. For many people in West Virginia, both in the past and in the present, the coal mines have offered a means out of poverty, a way of giving one’s family a middle-class life. This was certainly the case with Gary Fox, and it’s hard not to feel true heartbreak when he ultimately succumbs to black lung, having literally given his life to support his family.
What I truly appreciated about this book was the profound compassion and empathy with which Hamby managed to investigate his subjects. Throughout the book, we get a poignant sense of the quiet strength that is so key to the Appalachian character. It’s precisely this strength that allows regular folks like Gary Fox and John Cline to go up against companies like Massey and law firms like Jackson Kelly and even, as the book makes clear, doctors at Johns Hopkins (some of whom seemed curiously unwilling to acknowledge the existence of black lung in the vast majority of cases that they investigated).
Soul Full of Coal Dust is, ultimately, a story of triumph, in that there have been shifts in policy at the federal level making it easier for miners to get the black lung benefits that they deserve. If the book reminds us of anything, however, it’s that those victories are always precarious, that all it takes is the right administration or the right set of legislators or the right judge, and all of those gains could be lost.
Hopefully my fellow West Virginians will keep that in mind in the next election.

Thanks to Little Brown and Netgalley for sharing the ARC of this upcoming nonfiction title. Initially I thought this was another recounting of poverty and the opioid epidemic in Appalachia so I wasn’t expecting much. I didn’t realize until reading that the topic was the legal battles surrounding miners’ black lung disease. This was an excellent and infuriating read, although hopeful in the end. I recommend this for anyone who is a fan of social and legal justice stories. If you enjoy any books or movies that center around the lone idealistic lawyer up against a large corporation doing bad things, this read will be perfect for you.

LOVED this.....
Given I am from Kentucky it was so wonderful to hear true writing regarding and story telling (a true story) about what has been going on and happening in coal mining towns! I truly enjoyed reading this and from an UNBIASED reporting not a company that would stand to gain from coal mining or strip mining~ "Black Lung" has devested many families and taken family members for generation after generation! These poor parts of America the working men trying to put food on the table....they have very few choices. I was once told it it chancing being shot from making moon shine to sell...or coal mining~ So very SAD~
I highly recommend this book!
I give this 5 STARS~

Incredible writing on an interesting and important topic. I found this book very interesting and informative. Would highly recommend.

It requires patience to really connect with <i>Soul Full of Coal Dust</i>, but its gradual nature is appropriate, given the long, long roads Hamby describes being tread by black lung sufferers in search of justice and compensation. And, if one is willing to trust Hamby, he eventually brings us into the middle of incredible deception and, essentially, fraud, alongside amazing triumphs won through the work of a handful of determined people, including miners, their families, and their representatives.

Hamby has done an impressive job of transforming Pulitzer-winning journalism into a compelling text, hopefully opening the eyes of even more people to the ongoing deception wrought the coal industry, and the small ways it's being defeated.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for the ARC.

I received a digital galley of “Soul Full of Coal Dust,” in exchange for a fair review. What a joy to be able to read impassioned, investigative journalism that benefits disadvantaged coal miners over unethical coal companies, ethically dubious legal firms that hide expert opinions that are unfavorable to their coal company clients and expert medical witnesses who give opinions that ultimately benefit coal companies over severely ill miners. If there is any justice, this book will become a national best-seller and will be passed around to future labor organizers, community activists and progressive lawmakers.

I read this this with indignation at all the hurdles these miners and their families had to endure from the late 1960’s until 2014, when the US Labor Department implemented the final protective regulation in a string of wins that finally broke the adversarial legal system that coal miners with black lung had to endure before procuring legally entitled benefits— the use of new, harder-to-deceive continuous coal mine air sampling devices and the closure of several regulatory loopholes that overwhelmingly favored coal companies.

Hamby was part of an investigative unit that won the Pulitzer Prize highlighting the gauntlet that miners had to overcome —including Don Massey, the vile, convicted CEO of Massey Energy, the dubious legal ethics of a prominent West Virginia law firm—Jackson Kelly and the disgusting actions of. a Johns Hopkins physician, Paul Wheeler, MD , who systematically ignored x-ray guidance from accredited bodies that would give these radiologists some objectivity in detecting whether miners had features suggestive of coal workers pneumoconiosis. Through the work of dedicated lawyers like John Cline and investigative reporters like Hamby and others, they were able to eventually expose this unholy trinity (coal companies, law firms and physicians), which Hamby thoroughly and skillfully details.

Hamby does a yeoman job of humanizing these miners and the suffering they endured through defeat after defeat until justice finally arrives. I cherished reading this book— not only because my grandfather suffered through Black Lung when as a boy,I watched him expectorate black mucus and had to pause every few feet before having to rest, but who never missed Church and never once complained, and as a physician, who was thoroughly disgusted by the actions of Paul Wheeler, MD whose arrogance and ignominy should follow him to the grave. This book deserves a wide readership and should serve as a reminder that we need a free press, activists and muckrakers, and a strong regulatory framework so that less affluent individuals aren’t trampled by the politically connected and the powerful. Buy this book!!