The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century

The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. By Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. x + 275 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, appendix, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $24.95. ISBN: cloth, 0-801-43469-6; paper, 0-801-48473-1.

Reviewed by Perry K. Blatz

The Face of Decline is a fine work of social history, broadly based in its approach, painstaking in its research, innovative in its methodology, and thoughtful in its conclusions. Like Dublin's When the Mines Closed (1998), this work is essential for students both of deindustrialization and of the recent history of northeastern …