In Carbon County, USA, the historian Christian Wright examines the history of labor organization in eastern Utah's coal mining industry between the 1930s and 1980s. Split into three parts, the book first documents the period from the 1930s to the early postwar years, including the problems emerging in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Part 2 chronicles the coal industry's revival during the nationally and internationally tumultuous 1960s and when the UMWA encountered the rise of a competing union in 1970: Miners for Democracy. In the book's final section, Wright dedicated one chapter each to race, gender, and generation, emphasizing the 1970s to 1980s period, which was also the decline of industry and organization. In the epilogue, Wright connects the preceding chapters to pending questions about the roles of coal and labor organization in the United States during the twenty-first century.
Wright's argument is at least twofold. One...
