“History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”
– Howard Zinn
In the spirit of Zinn, we offer a list of books about the Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Region. If you know of any that we missed, contact us or let us know in a comment.
| From the Molly Maguires to the United Mine Workers: The Social Ecology of an Industrial Union, 1869-1897
By Harold Aurand |
| Population Change and Social Continuity: Ten Years in a Coal Town
By Harold Aurand |
| Coal Cracker Culture: Work and Values in Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835-1935 (2003)
By Harold Aurand |
| Growing Up in Coal Country (1996)
By Susan C. Bartoletti |
| A Coal Miner’s Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska (2000)
By Susan C. Bartoletti |
| The Anthracite Railroads: A Study in American Railroad Enterprise (1927)
By Jules I. Bogden |
| George M. Bretz: Photographer in the Mines (1997)
By Tom Beck |
| The Molly Maguires (1970)
By Anthony Bimba |
| Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925 (1994)
By Perry K. Blatz |
| The Molly Maguires (1970)
By Anthony Bimba |
| Anthracite People: Families, Unions and Work, 1900-1940 (1983)
By John Bodnar |
| Coalseam: Poems from the Anthracite Region (1993)
By Karen Blomain |
| The Molly Maguires (1964)
By Wayne B. Broehl Jr. |
| Anthracite Lads: A True Story of the Fabled Molly Maguires. Erie County Historical Society (2005)
By William H. Burke |
| A Molly Maguire Story (1992)
By Patrick Campbell |
| A Trooper’s Narrative of Service in the Anthracite Coal Strike, 1902 (1903)
By Stewart Culin |
| Stories from the Mines (2002)
By Thomas M. Currȧ and Gregory Matkosky |
| Mine Seed (2002)
By Lucia Dailey |
| The Anthracite Aristocracy: Leadership and Social Change in the Hard Coal Regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1800-1930 (1985)
By Edward J. Davies |
| Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire (1986)
By David DeKok |
| The Coal Cracker (1997)
By John Denvers |
| Anthracite Ghosts (1995)
By Walter L. Dinteman |
| Our Time (2002)
By Gerald N. Dougherty |
| When the Mines Closed: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times (1998)
By Thomas Dublin |
| The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century (2005)
By Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht |
| Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurs and City Growth in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna and Lehigh Regions, 1800-1920 (2001)
By Burton W. Fulsom |
| Monopoly and Region: The Anthracite Coal Industry and its Impact on the Economic Development of the Wyoming Region of Pennsylvania (1991)
By Russell G. Frantz |
| Around Hazleton (2005)
By Richard W. Funk |
| A Tribute to O’Hara and Other Stories (2000)
By Christine Goldbeck |
| Two Weeks Under: The Sheppton Mine Disaster / Miracle (2003)
By James A. Goodman |
| The Courtship of Joanna (1988)
By Catherine Gourley |
| The Slavic Community on Strike: Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (1968)
By Victor R. Greene |
| Panther Valley Tales (1997)
By James Haldeman |
| The Coal Miners of Panther Valley (1998)
By George Harvan |
| The Luzerne County Railroad (2010)
By Larry Hohol |
| The Kelayres Massacre: Politics and Murder in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Coal Country (2014)
By Stephanie Hoover |
| Anthracite Reds: A Documentary History of Communities in Northeastern Pennsylvania during the 1920s (2004)
By Walter T. Howard (ed.) |
| Anthracite Reds Vol. 2: A Documentary History of Communists in Northeastern Pennsylvania during the Great Depression (2004)
By Walter T. Howard (ed.) |
| Forgotten Radicals: Communists in the Pennsylvania Anthracite (2005)
By Walter T. Howard |
| Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, PA (1986)
By Renée Jacobs |
| The Anthracite Coal Combination in the United States with Some Account of the Early Development of the Anthracite Industry (1914)
By Eliot Jones |
| Dapper Dan Flood: The Controversial Life of a Congressional Power Broker (2015)
By William C. Kashatus |
| Anthracite’s Demise and the Post-Coal Economy of Northeastern Pennsylvania (2015)
By Thomas Keil and Jacqueline M. Keil |
| On Strike!: Capital Cities and the Willies-Barre Newspaper Unions (1988)
By Thomas J. Keil |
| Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998)
By Kevin Kenny |
| Minstrels of the Mine Patch: Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry (1938)
By George Korson |
| Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch (1960)
By George Korson |
| The Real Disaster is Above Ground: A Mine Fire and Social Conflict (1990)
By Stephen J. Kroll-Smith and Stephen Robert Couch Watch the Hour (2009) By J.R. Lindermuth Digging Dusty Diamonds: A History of the Pennsylvania Coal Region (2013) By John R. Lindermuth Something do Divine (2015) By J.R. Lindermuth |
| Undocumented Fears: Immigration and the Politics of Divide and Conquer in Hazleton, Pennsylvania (2016)
By Jamie Longazel |
| Coal Dust on Your Feet: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of an Anthracite Mining Town (2013)
By Janet Macgaffey |
| Civil War Draft Resistance and the Molly Maguires
Thomas E. McBride and Betty Lou McBride The Fire Down Below: The Great Anthracite Strike of 1902 and the People Who Made the Decisions (2002) By Jack McDonough |
| Pennsylvania Mining Families: The Search for Dignity in the Coalfields (1993)
By Barry P. Michrina |
| The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (1985)
By Donald L. Miller and Richard E. Sharpless |
| Anthracite! An Anthology of Pennsylvania Coal Region Plays (2006)
By Philip Mosley (ed.) The Pipes Are Calling: A Novel of Ireland and the Pennsylvania Coal Region (2006) By Loretta A. Murphy |
| The Guns of Lattimer: The True Story of a Massacre and a Trial, August 1897-March 1989 (1978)
By Michael Novak |
| Appointment in Samarra (1934)
By John O’Hara |
| Gibbsville, PA: The Classic Stories (1992)
By John O’Hara |
| Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania 1840 – 1868 (1990)
By Grace Palladino |
| Anthracite Country (1982)
By Jay Parini |
| The Patch Boys (1986)
By Jay Parini |
| Illustrating an Anthracite Era: The Photographic Legacy of John Horgan, Jr. (1995)
By Gwendoline E. Percival and Chester J. Kulesa |
| Breaker: A Boy’s Story of the 1902 Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Miner’s Strike (1988)
By Norah A. Perez |
| The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1905)
By Allan Pinkerton |
| Flames and Embers of Coal (1990)
By Ellis Wynne Roberts |
| Energy Transition and the Local Community: A Theory of Society Applied to Hazleton, Pennsylvania (1981)
By Dan Rose |
| Early Coal Mining in the Anthracite Region (2002)
By John Stuart Richards |
| The Breaker Whistle Blows (1984)
By Ellis W. Roberts |
| Anthracite Coal Communities (1904)
By Peter Roberts |
| Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools: Hazleton, Pennsylvania 1992-1994 (2006)
By Judith Joy Ross |
| In the Kingdom of Coal: An American Family and the Rock that Changes the World (2003)
By Dan Rottenberg |
| Pennsylvania’s Coal and Iron Police (2009)
By Spencer J. Sadler |
| Hard Coal, Hard Times: Ethnicity and Labor in the Anthracite Region (1984)
By David L. Salay (ed.) |
| Before the Molly Maguires: The Emergence of the Ethno-Religious Factor in the Politics of the Lower Anthracite Region (1976)
By William G. Shade |
| Their Fathers’ Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1960 (1999)
By Bonnie Stepenoff |
| Coal Cracker Blues (2003)
By James Stevens |
| We Were Here Once: Successes, Mistakes, and Calamities in Hazleton Area History (2004)
By L.A. Tarone |
| Molly Justice: A Story of Molly Maguires and Modocs in the Mahony Valley of Pennsylvania (2001)
By Steve Varonka |
| St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town’s Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (1988)
By Anthony F.C. Wallace |
| Medical Caregiving and Identity in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region, 1880-2000 (2011)
By Karol K. Weaver |
| The Coal King’s Slaves: A Coal Miner’s Story (2002)
By William G. Williams |
| The “Great Strike”: Perspectives on the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike (2002)
By Kenneth C. Wolensky et al. |
| Fighting for the Union Label: The Women’s Garment Industry and the ILGWU in Pennsylvania (2002)
By Kenneth C. Wolensky, Nicole H. Wolensky, and Robert P. Wolensky |
| The Aftermath of the Great Agnes Disaster: An Analysis of Emergent Groups and Local Government Officials in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania (1975)
By Robert P. Wolensky |
| Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1895-1959 (2013)
By Robert P. Wolensky, and William A. Hastie |
| The Knox Mine Disaster January 22, 1959: The Final Years of the Northern Anthracite Industry and the Effort to Rebuild a Regional Economy (1999)
By Robert P. Wolesky, Kenneth C. Wolensky, and Nicole H. Wolensky |
| Voices of the Knox Mine Disaster: Stories, Remembrances, and Reflections of the Anthracite Coal Industry’s Last Major Catastrophe, January 22, 1959 (2005)
By Robert P. Wolesky, Kenneth C. Wolensky, and Nicole H. Wolensky |
| Enterprise and Anthracite: Economics and Democracy in Schuylkill County, 1820-1875 (1961)
By Clifton K. Yearly, Jr. |
Anthracite Unite 
A wealth of great reading. Some should be required in the HASD. It’s time our chikdren gained an appreciation of the history of our region.
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The Pipes Are Calling by Loretta A. Murphy (2006)
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Added. Thanks!!
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