Employment and production in the Appalachian coal industry have plummeted over recent decades. But the lethal black lung disease, once thought to be near-eliminated, affects miners at rates never before recorded. Digging Our Own Graves sets this epidemic in the context of the brutal assault, begun in the 1980s and continued since, on the United Mine Workers of America and the collective power of rank-and-file coal miners in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields. This destruction of militancy and working class power reveals the unacknowledged social and political roots of a health crisis that is still barely acknowledged by the state and coal industry. Barbara Ellen Smith’s essential study, now with an updated introduction and conclusion, charts the struggles of miners and their families from the birth of the Black Lung Movement in 1968 to the present-day importance of demands for environmental justice through proposals like the Green New Deal. Through extensive interviews with participants and her own experiences as an activist, the author provides a vivid portrait of communities struggling for survival against the corporate extraction of labor, mineral wealth, and the very breath of those it sends to dig their own graves.

Until we perceive our bodies as the temple of God; satan will continue to come against us through a gluttonous spirit. It is his pleasure to see the people of God plagued with obesity, sickness, and diseases. And when he has crippled this powerful nation, the cry unto heaven will be great. We must obey the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and live: Take heed to yourselves, lest at anytime your heart be overcharged (overworked) with surfeiting (overeating) and the cares of this life. And that day (of sickness and disease) come upon you unawares (without warning). For as a trap shall it come on all them that dwell on the whole earth . Luke 21:34. Obesity, sickness, and disease has no respect of person. The great and the small shall die an untimely death in this great nation if we do not take a stand against these deadly plagues. As far back as I can remember, Obesity rest, ruled, and abide over me and continued to do so well into my adulthood. At the age of 55 obesity and it's related diseases took it's toil on my body; thus sickness came upon me like a thief in the night, robbing me of my quality of life. Through dreams and visions from the word of God, I learn how to program my mind to succeed and overcome a gluttonous spirit. Today my will to live is far greater than my foolishness to die. I tell of my uphill journey to recovery in this powerful book.

Now available in Spanish, the bestselling book in which a leaner Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee shares his secrets for creating better health habits that last a lifetime.

In 1875 Ohio, twelve-year-old Cap Cooper is an aspiring inventor—and a reluctant graverobber—enlisted by his father to help pay for his mother's medical expenses. When one of the dead returns to life at his touch, Cap unearths a world of dark secrets that someone at the local medical school wants to keep buried. On the brink of discovery, he'll have to use every ounce of cunning he has to protect those he loves most and save his own skin. The Grave Digger is an eerie mystery set in the aftermath of the Civil War, filled with action, friendship, and a hint of the paranormal, perfect for those who enjoy reading late into the night and long after the lights go out.

The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions between disease and the peoples of America from the pre-Columbian world to the present. Grob's ultimate lesson is stark but valuable: there can be no final victory over disease. The world in which we live undergoes constant change, which in turn creates novel risks to human health and life. We conquer particular diseases, but others always arise in their stead. In a powerful challenge to our tendency to see disease as unnatural and its virtual elimination as a real possibility, Grob asserts the undeniable biological persistence of disease. Diseases ranging from malaria to cancer have shaped the social landscape--sometimes through brief, furious outbreaks, and at other times through gradual occurrence, control, and recurrence. Grob integrates statistical data with particular peoples and places while giving us the larger patterns of the ebb and flow of disease over centuries. Throughout, we see how much of our history, culture, and nation-building was determined--in ways we often don't realize--by the environment and the diseases it fostered. The way in which we live has shaped, and will continue to shape, the diseases from which we get sick and die. By accepting the presence of disease and understanding the way in which it has physically interacted with people and places in past eras, Grob illuminates the extraordinarily complex forces that shape our morbidity and mortality patterns and provides a realistic appreciation of the individual, social, environmental, and biological determinants of human health.

"Life as a gravedigger was tough. Now that I'm dead, it's even worse."