1492
by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto |
Catastrophe
by David Keys |
Civilization
by Roger Osborne |
Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare
by John Toohey | 
Cotton
by Stephen Yafa | 
The Twentieth Century
by Howard Zinn | 
1491
by Charles C. Mann |
Love Stories
by Jonathan Ned Katz | 
The Great Influenza
by John M. Barry | 
1493
by Charles C. Mann |
Eyewitness to History
by John Carey | 
Connections
by James Burke | 
Polio
by David M. Oshinsky | 
The Codebreakers
by David Kahn | 
World History For Dummies
by Peter Haugen | 
Civilization on Trial
by Arnold J. Toynbee | 
A Crack in the Edge of the World
by Simon Winchester |
Napoleon's Privates
by Tony Perrottet | 
The Big Oyster
by Mark Kurlansky | 
The American Plague
by Molly Caldwell Crosby |
In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins hundreds of millions of years ago and spans the globe. Prized as "the best stone in Britain" by Roman invaders who carved jewelry out of it, coal has transformed societies, expanded frontiers, and sparked social movements, and still powers our electric grid. Yet coal's world-changing power has come at a tremendous price, including centuries of blackening our skies and lungs-and now the dangerous warming of our global climate. Ranging from the "great stinking fogs" of London to the rat-infested coal mines of Pennsylvania, from the impoverished slums of Manchester to the toxic streets of Beijing, Coal is a captivating narrative about an ordinary substance with an extraordinary impact on human civilization.