Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry

By Priscilla Long
Paragon House, 1989

ISBN 1-55778-465-5

This scholarly history of the American coal industry, my first book, is long out of print, but is still available on the used book market.

“An intense and accomplished social history.” —Christopher Hitchens, New York Newsday

“One of those rare works that asks and answers important questions about who we are…as a nation and how we got to that point.” —Barbara Kingsolver, Women’s Review of Books

“Both scholarly and unusually well written, so that the story moves along at a good pace while not compromising the standards of acute historical analysis.” –E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class

“As a piece of historical investigation, it is superbly done. But it is more than a history of the coal industry; it illuminates the development of the American corporate economy in the late 19th and early 20th century, and gives a rare picture of intense class conflict in a country often presumed to lack that. Her account of the Colorado coal strike is not only impeccably accurate but recaptures the drama and excitement of that astonishing event with rare skill.” —Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States.

“A very well-written and well-researched history of the American coal industry from its earliest days through the 1920s.” —Choice