This book is both interesting and heartbreaking. It's also a high-flying overview, covering thousands of years in about three hundred pages. I think that's just right for me- I don't know that I could have taken too much more about the Victorians dying from "fog" or the little kids with rickets or... well, any of it. Including the modern coal industry spin doctors who are the same soulless bastards they've always been. Coal dust is GOOD for children to breathe, they said back then. Greenhouse gases are GOOD for farmers, they say now. *shudder*Well worth reading.