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Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster (Hardcover)

by Melissa Fay Greene (Author) "In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, in 1958, coal-mining men dropped through the crust of the earth to a few of the deepest roads..." (more)

4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (Mar 4 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0151005591
ISBN-13: 978-0151005598
Product Dimensions: 23.7 x 16.1 x 3 cm
Shipping Weight: 613 g

Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #135,697 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories:

#35 in	Books > Engineering > Civil > Environmental > Mining
#35 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Civil > Environmental > Mining
#39 in	Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Prospecting & Mining

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Product Description

Amazon.ca

It's hard to imagine a scenario more terrifying than being trapped in a gaseous, crumbling coal mine two miles beneath the earth's surface in utter darkness, without food or water, while your gravely injured colleagues howl in agony all around you. Actually, there is one thing more terrifying: knowing you'll probably die there. This is the premise of author Melissa Fay Greene's engrossing book, Last Man Out, which recreates the Springhill, Nova Scotia mine disaster of 1958. Of the 174 men who entered the mine on the afternoon shift of October 23, 74 never left. Last Man Out is the story of two small groups among the 99 survivors who lasted more than a week in the bowels of the deepest coal mine in the world after its sudden collapse. By relying (among other things) on survivor interviews conducted at the time by two Nova Scotia professors, Greene places the reader in the devastated shafts with the men. "Deep underground, darkness and silence ruled for an unknown length of time," writes the author. "The narrow layers of air swarmed with coal dust as if the flying particles and specks of coal were the only things in the universe, like black, charred, stirred-up matter in the eons before Creation. In the swirling blackness, the men's faces stung as if in a sandstorm. Some unconscious, some dying, they were zinged and pelted where they lay by a thousand small meteorites of coal." We hear their conversations--all lyrical Maritimer lilt--and watch as they struggle to free those trapped, and to free themselves. Greene also gives us their families, working class folks just barely hanging on and facing utter ruin at the loss of the sole breadwinner. And we hear from many of the 137 reporters from around the world--plus accidental participants like comedian Shecky Green--who gather at the site to bring the tragic story home. Greene is successful not only in capturing the misery of the trapped men but also in giving context to the horrifying event. Educated men don't descend the mines to make a living; men with no alternatives do. Their strength and dignity in the face day-to-day adversity makes Last Man Out a thoroughly humbling read. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

The mining disaster that killed 75 men in Nova Scotia in 1958 is rich terrain for a good yarn, but Greene's book about the miners who survived and those who didn't comes up short. Her research is adequate, but surprisingly, NBA finalist Greene fails to bring this tale to life. In re-creating the events leading up to and following the catastrophe, imagined dialogue rings inauthentic: that miners gathered around a colleague with a mile of rock pinning his arm down exclaim, Oh my God, oh my God, and Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, seems a tad polite, even for 1950s Canada. Similarly, the author's overreliance on exclamation points in dialogue forces tension and excitement. As well, the miner subculture isn't effectively captured, and the buildup to the explosion, known as the Bump, is bereft of suspense. The story gets interesting after the rescue of 19 men, who are subsequently exploited by various factions, including the media and the public relations aide to a segregationist U.S. governor, who arranges to fly the survivors and their families to a beach resort the governor's state is looking to promote. The presumed PR goes horribly awry when it's learned that one miner is black, as are his 12 children. Greene (Praying for Sheetrock; Temple Bombing) does prove successful in her fascinating narrative on this miner an amateur musician known as the Singing Miner and Canada's Citizen of the Year in 1958. But sadly, his is the only head that Greene succeeds in getting into.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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First Sentence
In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, in 1958, coal-mining men dropped through the crust of the earth to a few of the deepest roads on the planet. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.6 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A whole lot more that a survival story!, Mar 25 2004

By A Customer

The basic facts of this book's content - the event surrounding the Spring Hill Mine rescue have been covered in other reviews and I will not waste time rehashing them yet again. Instead I would like to focus upon the less obvious gems within this book that in my opinion transend the amzing story of survival.

Melissa Green takes the reader on a journey not just into a coal mine, but into life in this working class town in 1958. The families, the marriages and the race relations all form a familiar image for those who like myself lived in or near the same time frame(in my case as a child) except that this book provided me an understanding of my parent's world. While my father wasn't a miner or ever a manual laborer nevertheless the men of the mine matched up with faces and families of those I grew up with in a world long lost to history. Of solid men who took care of their families, saved, and yet know how to have fun.

Beyond that personal appeal the medium of the story takes us with the trapped men and allows us to expereince their empotions. Somehow inspite of the fact we know it is coming the disaster seems as fresh and unexpected as it was to the men who also knew that some day there would be the "big one" and prayed they wouldn't be inside when it happened.

The aftermath leaves the reader choking on coal dust and shaken by the sight of crushed men whom they have just gotten to know. Unlike some writers the author doesn't pretty it up and the all the horror and mental trauma of the men is ours to share. We also share through the men's thoughts, thoughts of children and the future they now realize they will never see, thoughts of wives whom they will never hold and the constant and never ending question of what will it be like when death comes? Like so many of us who take life's little pleasures for granted, this disaster brings into focus for these trapped and dying men the value of those things and people they took for granted.

Lie in the coal black mine on a bed of broken rock while thirst unlike anything you have ever known treatens to drive you out of your mind. Realize your pants can't stay up because you've lost so much weight and understand that you can't last, can't live much longer. Then return to thoughts of your parched throat that feels as if it is filled with a splintery wooden stake that keeps "being twisted and twisted."

A harrowing and personal experience. Well done! Well done indeed!

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3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed - written as "soap opera non-fiction", Dec 21 2003

By	Barry M. Daniels (Chicago, Il USA) - See all my reviews

There seems to be a new writing style out there that is a cross between fiction and non-fiction (not faction), so let's call this style "soap opera non-fiction". That's where an author takes a historical event, and trys to write it like a "soap opera". The last two books I've bought have done this. I guess the object is to make the book appealling to more readers and therefore make more money.

This was a fascinating story that could have been better told if it was written from a documentary or historical perspective. I wanted to learn something, not read a made-for-TV movie.

I still don't know how the Governor of Georgia and his exploits fits in this story? That is a bizzare and dis-jointed side-story. She somehow tried to tie-in perceived racial incidents surrounding this tradgedy.

I was dissappointed in this book.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Needs editing!, Oct 24 2003

By	Douglas Pass (Prospect, Nova Scotia Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is really two stories, the Springhill mine disaster and the political exploitation of the survivors. Oddly, the latter is more absorbing. The account of the mine disaster could have used a stronger editorial hand. There are a great many characters introduced at the beginning of the book, but the discriptions tended to be repetitive so that they were not well delineated. There were a few copy errors that should have been caught (a spring night in October; the maple leaf flag being raised several years before it was created....) Worst was the purple prose. The author seems addicted to similies, often using at least one in each paragraph, and many were so strained that they broke the flow of the narrative. If you remember the old comic strip "Our Boarding House," you will understand what I mean. Fortunately the writing improves as the book goes on, but this 280 page book would have been better if it had been boiled down to 200 pages.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars BRINGS YOU TO TEARS
In the year 1958, the Springhill Mine Disaster occurred in Nova Scotia, where men were trapped and plunged into darkness below sea level with little hope of escape or ever seeing... Read more

Published on Aug 20 2003 by Heather Marshall Negahdar

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story from a great author
Ever since I visited the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, I have been looking for a really good book about mining accidents. Read more

Published on Aug 18 2003

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Story, Distracting Technique
Author Melissa Fay Greene employes the "non-fiction novel" storytelling technique in the book, "Last Man Out," which in a disaster book always carries the risk of exploiting the... Read more

Published on July 27 2003 by Brian D. Rubendall