Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal

Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal is a 2007 book published by the University of Kentucky Press. The award-winning book is written by Virginia resident Penny Loeb, a former senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and a former investigative reporter for Newsday.

Loeb spent nine years chronicling the difficult situation of Trish Bragg and other inhabitants of the West Virginia coalfields. In Loeb's analysis, these people are "caught between the economic opportunities provided by coal and the detriments to health and to quality of life that are so often the by-products of the coal industry". Moving Mountains is an account of the human and environmental costs of coal extraction, and the grassroots movement to mitigate those costs.

Loeb has received many awards for journalism, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and for a National Magazine Award in 1993 and 1997.

Read more about Moving Mountains: How One Woman And Her Community Won Justice From Big Coal:  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words moving, woman, community, won, justice, big and/or coal:

    We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach.
    Viola Spolin (b. 1911)

    The question has been asked, “What is a woman?” A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman is a dreamer. A woman is a planner. A woman is a maker, and a molder. A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman builds bridges. A woman makes children and makes cars. A woman writes poetry and songs. A woman is a person who makes choices. You cannot even simply become a mother anymore. You must choose motherhood. Will you choose change? Can you become its vanguard?
    Eleanor Holmes Norton (b. 1937)

    The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.
    Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)

    Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.
    Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

    I hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett’s resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.
    —For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)