Farewell, King Coal: from industrial triumph to climatic disaster - Tapa dura

For the layman, this is a genuinely interesting and valuable book: it fills in a lot of information, and offers intensely relevant writing on issues which face everyone... It takes a wide view of its subject in its history (mining and transport of coal), its impact on our society (the industrial revolution, the gradual emergence of modern lifestyles powered by coal and energy from coal), the technological issues involved in finding, mining and transporting a difficult material, the growing modern realisation of the price society pays for the benefits of a coal-driven economy, and not least the problems for the human organism that a society dependent on coal faces... Not sensationally, but calmly and and clearly, this book presents to the non-specialist a welcome opportunity to sift through the welter of conflicting news and comment of every day and reflect on the need for a re-alignment of society from the days when King Coal was in the ascendant, and the problems lay in the future. --University of Edinburgh Journal

In writing this account of the rise and decline of the coal industry and its effects on the health of the miners, of those who worked with coal products and of almost all of us who have breathed in the pollution from its combustion, Professor Seaton points to the often hidden adverse consequences of transformative technologies.