Face Boss The Memoir of a Western Kentucky Coal Miner

Michael Guillerman spent nearly eighteen years underground at the Peabody Coal Company's Camp No. 2 mine in Union County, Kentucky. He started as a belt shoveler and worked as a timberman, shooter, shuttle car operator and rock duster before becoming a salaried section foreman, the face boss of the title. Frustrated by how poorly the media understood mining during the 2006 Sago disaster, he set down what the work is truly like.

He is frank about the dangers: methane ignitions, mine fires, squeezes, injuries, wildcat strikes and layoffs. He is just as good on the humour, the camaraderie and the pride of bringing out hundreds of tons of coal a day, and he writes thoughtfully about race relations underground and the growing number of women in the industry. This is an honest, often funny insider's account for anyone curious about working lives in the American coalfields.