Last Man Out, Melissa Fay Greene
Last Man Out, Melissa Fay Greene
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Last Man Out
The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster

Author: Melissa Fay Greene

Narrator: Henry Strozier

Unabridged: 9 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/06/2008

Synopsis

In October 1958 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest mine on the planet collapsed, killing hundreds of coal miners. Long after hope was gone, diggers found a dozen men walled-in, alive, and, two days later, six more. The fantastic rescue received global coverage, the first of the television era.  In Georgia, a fantastic PR plan was hatched to invite the survivors to recuperate on Jekyll Island, thereby advertising the sea island as a new tourist destination. The invitation was accepted before the last men were excavated.  ​The last man out, a hero within the group, was Afro-Canadian miner Maurice Ruddick. He was Black, Georgia was segregated, the Georgia governor tried to avoid shaking his hand, and the clever PR idea turned into an internationally reported American insult of a Canadian hero. “Last Man Out, by a natural-born storyteller from the American South, is as good a book about a Canadian disaster as you’re ever likely to find … by combing all the interviews with her own vivid prose and high sensitivity to human anguish, Greene has created a book that’s … deep, moving and timeless."—Harry Bruce, The Toronto Globe and Mail A New York Times Notable Book • Chicago Tribune’s Favorite Nonfiction Books, 2003 • Toronto Globe Best Books of 2003 • Cox News Best Books of 2003 • A New York Public Library Best Book, 2004 Includes an interview with author Melissa Fay Greene

About Melissa Fay Greene

Melissa Fay Greene is the author of the National Book Award finalists Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing, as well as Last Man Out and There Is No Me Without You. New York University's journalism department named Praying for Sheetrock one of the top one hundred works of journalism in the twentieth century, and her books have earned numerous other accolades. Melissa has written for the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Reader's Digest, among other publications. She lives with her husband and nine children in Atlanta.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Stefanie on January 03, 2024

Springhill Mine in Springhill, Nova Scotia experienced what is known in the mining world as a "bump" on October 23, 1958. A bump is scientifically known as underground seismic activity, usually resulting from the collapse of support pillars inside of the mine. This particular event began as a small......more

Goodreads review by Enikő on November 01, 2011

Another one of those books that you read and then can't stop thinking about. It was very well written. Everyone's personalities were so well described that the reader really got a sense of who everyone was. I had been surprised to see that the author was American, but when I read and saw the America......more

Goodreads review by Judd on September 20, 2020

I never thought I would need to look up the "spoiler" formatting for a non-fiction book, but here we are. "Last Man Out" by Melissa Greene is an intriguing and unpredictable exploration of the 1958 Springhill Mine Disaster in Nova Scotia. Like many typical disaster accounts, it follows a cast of char......more

Goodreads review by Kj on August 26, 2023

Depths of 13500 and 14000 feet, digging for combustible coal, fighting off the firedamp and afterdamp gases. Buried alive for a week, has to be close to anyone's worst nightmare. The Springhill mine system No2 floors smashed upwards into each other with pockets of survival under ruin of rock and coa......more

Goodreads review by Laura on March 30, 2015

Technically I only made it about two-thirds of the way through this book, which is when the story of the rescue ended and the story of the aftermath, including a lot of stuff about a state-sponsored holiday to racially-segregated Georgia, which was supposed to be great tourism advertising of the sta......more

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