A Newer Species of Trouble

In 1973, Yale sociologist Kai Erikson visited the ruins of several coal-mining towns in Logan County, West Virginia. The previous February, a mountaintop dam full of coal waste had unleashed a flood of toxic sludge, destroying about 550 homes and leaving more than 100 people dead. When Erikson arrived, he encountered “a scene of such heavy, muted pain that I have a hard time finding words to capture it,” he wrote.