The Nobel Laureate Playwright. George Bernard Shaw knew well the human condition when he observed that, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history, ” and that, “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Jeff Biggers new book, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: the secret legacy of coal in the heartland, is a vivid illustration of our willingness to justify destructive behavior today by recreating a history that never existed in the first place.