To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Monongah, West Virginia mine disaster, the West Virginia University Press is honored to release Davitt McAteer's definitive history of the worst industrial accident in US history. Monongah documents the events which led to the explosion that claimed hundreds of lives on the morning of December 6, 1907. Nearly thirty years of exhaustive research have led McAteer to the conclusion that close to 500 men and boys????????????many of them immigrants????????????lost their lives that day, leaving hundreds of women widowed and more than 1, 000 children orphaned. McAteer delves deeply into the personalities, economic forces, and social landscape of the mining communities of north central West Virginia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tragedy at Monongah led to a greater awareness of industrial working conditions, and ultimately to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which Davitt McAteer helped to enact.