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Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction

Kline, Michael; Harris, Wess
Publisher:  PM Press
Date Written:  01/09/2017
Year Published:  2017  
Pages:  264pp   Price:  $19.95   ISBN:  978-1-62963-445-6
Resource Type:  Book

Written in Blood features the work of Appalachia’s leading scholars and activists making available an accurate, ungilded, and uncensored understanding of our history. Combining new revelations from the past with sketches of a sane path forward, this is a deliberate collection looking at our past, present, and future.

Abstract: 
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Publisher's Description:

Sociologist Wess Harris (When Miners March) further documents the infamous Esau scrip system for women, suggesting an institutionalized practice of forced sexual servitude that was part of coal company policy. In a conversation with award-winning oral historian Michael Kline, federal mine inspector Larry Layne explains corporate complicity in the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster which killed seventy-eight men and became the catalyst for the passage of major changes in U.S. mine safety laws. Mine safety expert and whistleblower Jack Spadaro speaks candidly of years of attempts to silence his courageous voice and recalls government and university collaboration in covering up details of the 1972 Buffalo Creek flooding disaster, which killed over a hundred people and left four thousand homeless.

Moving to the next generation of thinkers and activists, attorney Nathan Fetty examines current events in Appalachia and musician Carrie Kline suggests paths forward for people wishing to set their own course rather than depend on the kindness of corporations.

Praise:

"Written in Blood shines a critical light on the untold true history of the WV Mine Wars."
- Mari-Lynn Evans, director and producer of Blood on the Mountain

"With Written in Blood, Wess Harris has once again called attention to how the West Virginia state government and the coal industry have struggled to keep our state’s real history buried beneath a slag heap of fairy tales and misinformation. His critics will find this book, like his other works, abrasive and filled with alleged distortions about the coal companies’ abuse and exploitation of the state's coal miners and their families. His supporters will welcome Written in Blood as Harris once again pushes the boundaries in an effort to reveal that abuse and exploitation."
- David Corbin, author of Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922
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