Reviews

WINNER OF THE SIERRA CLUB'S DAVID R. BROWER AWARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM

WINNER OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM'S 2005 JOHN B. OAKES AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM

"Lost Mountain is journalist Erik Reece's searing report on the death—or murder, take your pick—of a mountain, and an exposé of the brutal toll of radical strip mining on Appalachia...Reading Lost Mountain is like grabbing a hot electrical wire—it fills you with fire, and makes you want to scream like hell."
—Men's Journal

"Riveting, important...Mr. Reece dissects the unholy alliances between politicans and the coal industry. He considers the effects of voracious globalism and suggests alternatives to a coal-based Kentucky economy. He underscores the urgency of sustainable forest management. And he suggests that taxes reflect the true social and environmental costs of coal. Why? Because, as a woman who grew up in Harlan County puts it: 'We all live downstream.'"
—The New York Times

"Reece's report is a powerful indictment of the lax oversight of mining regularions and their scuttling by political allies of the mining industry...There are echoes of Rachel Carson's warning of ecological disaster in Lost Mountain."
—The Boston Globe

"Finally a book has been written about mountaintop removal. While Kentucky's and West Virginia's Appalachian peaks are being flattened to the tune of 1,955 square miles (equivalent to the state of Delaware), America has stood by in shameful ignorance and disregard. Now Erik Reece has lifted the veil from the mining industry's preferred method of extracting coal: quickly, cheaply, with minimum manpower, and maximum ecological destruction...The beautifully written book is also a jeramiad to an entire way of life in Appalachia—a life closely linked to nature and the mountains—which is on the verge of being wiped out by America's addiction to coal."
—The Louisville Courier-Journal

"With a journalist's eye, a naturalist's heart, and the passion of a mining engineer's son, Reece produces a powerful environmental exposé, documenting the process on one sorry Kentucky peak."
—Outside Magazine

"This is that rarest kind of work, a melding of investigative reporting and deep and evocative writing about a particular people in particular places. It makes me think of Orwell in its quiet anger and deep committment. Erik Reece is obviously a writer to be reckoned with."
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"Orwell and Kafka in their bleakest moments would have felt right at home in Appalachian Kentucky, mired in corruption and class warfare...Written with an eye for abiding, catastrophic imagery...a portrait of coal country as stark and galvanizing as Harry Caudill's classic Night Comes to the Cumberlands."
—The Tampa Tribune

"In compelling prose peppered with cold, hard facts, [Reece] tracked the fate of one Appalachian peak, aptly named Lost Mountain...Lost Mountain was so named because early hunters often became disoriented among its dense and verdant trees. As Reece conveys with superb reporting, we still have not found our way."
—Discover Magazine

"Lost Mountain is a story well told, both eloquent and moving. It is a requiem for 'a landscape worthy of comparison to an earthly paradise'...But this is not just a tale of environmental ruination. The blasting, coal washing, and valley filling create deep human suffering, raising issues of decnecny, fairness, and justice...But no good book is purely a lemnt, and this one certainly is not. Insteadit looks forward to a better era when at last we will have built a culture to match the peaks of Appalachia. And we have neither the time nor the mountains to waste."
—American Scientist

"Lost Mountain is a documentary, a personal narrative, a natural history of the Lost Mountain ecosystem. It's also a social history of Appalachia, an evaluation of its modern political significance, and always, always a green threnody."
—The Buffalo News

"Time to listen to the words of American ground. This eloquent book tells us what we already know in our bones and will soon have slapped in our face: We can't murder mountains without killing ourselves. Decades after Appalachia became a symbol of American failure and shame, we seem to have forgotten the lessons our father and mother taught us. In Lost Mountain, Erik Reece shows us the way to go home."
—Charles Bowden, author of Blood Orchid

"Lost Mountain is a great book arriving at a crucial time. Mountaintop removal is a crime against humanity. The terrible irony is that the people who should most read hte book won't open it—the ones destroying the land and taking the profits out of state. It's up to you to read Lost Mountain and voice your concerns, not just for Kentucky, but for the future of America. Appalachia is everyone's backyard. Your front yard is next."
—Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight

"Reece writes at times iwth a naturalist's lyric ease, at others with the urgency of the activist's call to arms...Indeed, by the end of this careful and illuminating chronicle of destruction, Lost Mountain begins to represent all that is heedlessly selfish in America's attitude toward its environment."
—The Virginia Quarterly Review

"For all its pleasures, we don't come to so-called nature writing expecting a 'gripping read.' But I couldn't put down Lost Mountain. There's a dissonance in the book—between some extremely ugly environmental realities that Erik Reece has worked hard to understand and the superb, unpretentious prose in which he describes them—that kept me pinned. And of course, apart from its stylisitic virtues, Lost Mountain happens to be important."
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Blood Horses

"Criminal. That's the word that comes to mind upon reading Reece's excoriating expose of the coal industry's pernicious rape of the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Once the site of the oldest and most ecologically diverse forest in the country, now this stretch of Appalachian wilderness has gone from being a verdant North American rain forest to a bleak and dismal lunar landscape, thanks to the severely destructive strip-mining process known as "mountaintop removal." Under this radical form of coal retrieval, ore is mined by literally blasting away tops of mountains, dumping waste into the valleys below, burying streams, polluting wells, undermining buildings, and altering fragile ecologies. Reece spent a year intimately observing and chronicling the demolition of the ironically named Lost Mountain, hiking to its summit, fording its streams' headwaters, interviewing its residents, and visiting cemeteries to pay respect to those who ultimately succumbed to the pollution and violence perpetrated in the name of energy efficiency and economic viability. The tale of Kentucky's mutilated environment is one that, like the mountain, has been lost. Resounding kudos to Reece for vividly bringing this critical story to light."
—Booklist (starred review)

"A searing indictment of how a country's energy lust is ravaging the hills and hollows of Appalachia. [An] elegiac book—much more than just an eyewitness report on ecological decimation...The Kentucky-born author, who canoed clean Appalachian rivers as a youth, has written an impassioned account of a business rife with industrial greed, devious corporate ownership and unenforced environmental laws. It's also a heartrending account of the rural residents whose lives are being ruined by strip-mining's relentless, almost unfettered, encroachment."
—Publishers Weekly

"Compelling, considered, and courageous...Read this book and take action."
—Library Journal