Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia

This book is critical for understanding the history and ecology of mountaintop renewal; it brings the devastation home in a way that immediately touches you. I'd highly recommend this to anyone interested in environmental issues; my only complaint is that the book should have been longer - no amount of writing can make up for the horrors Reece exposes. Alan Sondheim

LOST MOUNTAIN: A YEAR IN THE VANISHING WILDERNESS isn't a travelogue or adventure story so much as a search for truth in the mountains of Appalachia, home to one of the last great forests in the world - and also threatened by the mother lode of strip mining which has been the backbone of living for so many Appalachian families. Author Reece spent a year witnessing the decimation of a single mountain - Lost Mountain - and surveys strip mining as not just a local concern but as a icon for a mainstream crisis involving businesses, government and the environment alike. At once literary, reflective, personal and observation, LOST MOUNTAIN reflects on all that is lost. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

The Appalachians have long been abused by the rest of America as a veritable internal colony, as coal and other resources are extracted ruthlessly and the money ends up elsewhere, leaving the resource-rich people mired in every other possible type of poverty. In a business that has been brutal for generations, the extractive industries have now introduced their most insidious practice yet – mountaintop removal mining. Instead of utilizing mineshafts, or even terribly destructive strip mining, the companies are now forcibly removing entire mountaintops to get at relatively scant quantities of coal. Forested peaks become flat rocky mesas, while rivers and valleys are buried under the resulting slagheaps. In addition to the obvious environmental devastation, this cataclysmic new process continues to inflict terrible human costs on local residents. In this book, Erik Reece reports on his multi-year observations at the tragically named Lost Mountain in Eastern Kentucky, which suffered the ugly fate of mountaintop removal mining. Reece made monthly visits to Lost Mountain, and offers a melancholy journal of the death of this once vibrant forested hill, as coal operators transformed a lush environment into a literal rubble heap. Reece also investigated the travails of the region's people. Coal companies are still harassing citizens who complain about their operations, while pocketed politicians turn a blind eye and give perennial false arguments about job creation and economic development. Meanwhile, the companies cut and run after their destruction is complete, taking their profits elsewhere while the locals suffer from toxic illnesses, flooding, mudslides, contaminated water, and the deepest poverty in America. The human hardship uncovered by Reece is both heartbreaking and maddening, and this book is a powerhouse look into issues of social justice, environmental protection, economics, and the exploitation of all of the above by unscrupulous operators for quick profits. The only problem with this book is the disappointingly weak conclusion, in which Reece attempts a general environmentalist philosophy that not only has been done a billion times, but is also far too diffuse to apply to the very specific Appalachian issues he covers in the rest of the book. But otherwise, this is one of the most important conservationist books of the year. [~doomsdayer520~]

If you read this book and don't feel compelled to make a difference than Reece's point has been lost on you. I am a student at Western Kentucky University and recently traveled to Eastern Kentucky and fell in love with the people, the culture and the mountains of Appalachia. The more I learn about mountain top removal the more it angers me that nothing is being done. Reece really puts the corruption of the coal industry into perspective. The people he spoke to and the research he did makes you think about the actual cost of cheap coal.

It was sad to see this "crime" is still going on in Kentucky and that little or nothing has been done about it over the course of my lifetime and that it has only gotten worse. I have lived in California for the last 20 years, having felt the need to leave Kentucky upon college graduation. I was active as a student at U of KY in 1971 and spent quite a number of weekends in Pike County trying to help the poor people while learning all I could about strip mining as it existed then. It was sad to read nothing has really changed and and the land, its resources, the wildlife, the Appalachia Mountain area is being systematically destroyed, the creeks, streams, roadways, bridges, and homes and communities also being destroyed while out of state Coal Company owners get minimal fines, slaps on the wrist and the State and the People of Kentucky get little or nothing. This would be bad if jobs were at least being created, but they aren't. This would be bad if the State of Kentucky was at least getting a fair price for the coal but it isn't even getting that. The damage caused to the roads, bridges, river, creeks, streams, land, wildlife, scenic beauty, communities of mountain people, the heritage is all being systematically destroyed without even a fair and/or just compensation. The Coal Company owners and the Politicians who fix things nice for them in DC are getting rich but Kentucky is being raped forever by this ecological travisty. Young people need to read this if only to learn how State Leaders act once they get to D.C. and legislate against the interests of the States they represent and the people who voted them in office. Anyone who has read Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature will want to read this one.