West Seattle Author’s New Book; Book Talk Set for Paper Boat Booksellers Oct. 9

A new book by West Seattle author Bob Wyss, “Black Gold, The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal,” was released this week by the University of California Press. Wyss will give an inaugural talk about the book on Oct. 9 at Paper Boat Booksellers, 4522 California Ave. SW, at 6:30 p.m.

Black Gold is an environmental history of a product that was once familiar in every West Seattle home. Coal not only warmed winter’s chill it was the spark that powered railroads, the mighty steel and other industries, and it was the primary source that eventually created the American empire. However, America paid a price for burning coal – it was dirty and dangerous, and today it threatens to dangerously overheat the planet at a time when an American President wants to revive it. In West Seattle that means not only dangerously higher temperatures but rising sea levels on our Puget Sound coastline, increased toxic smoke as forest fires become more frequent, and possible droughts as glaciers disappear and winter snow decreases in the mountains.

Black Gold and its message has already drawn some press attention including a national interview at Sea Change Radio on its August 19 broadcast that can be found here. Natural History magazine is publishing an excerpt in its October issue. More information about the book can be found here.

About the Author

Bob Wyss has been a West Seattle resident for seven years. Previously, he was a reporter and editor at the Providence Journal for thirty years, a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut for fifteen years, where he is currently Professor Emeritus. He is the author of three previous books, The Man Who Built the Sierra Club, A Life of David Brower, Brimfield Rush, and Covering the Environment, and edited the anthology How I Wrote the Story. His work has appeared in the The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Smithsonian, and Rhode Island Monthly.