《煤老板自述三十年:煤老板眼中的世道与人生》将带我们走入煤老板真实的的私人世界。煤老板老五用纸和笔记录着自己这个阶层的所思所想、大小事件、艰难险阻以及诸多段子。现在，他将这些私人档案公之于世，让我们有这次前所未有的机会了解煤老板波澜跌宕的人生。
“煤老板”一词风行四海，但煤老板这个阶层是如何产生和萌芽的呢？它有哪些传奇人物呢？它有哪些你不知晓的人生智慧呢？它与暴富、人脉、冲突、械斗等之间又存在怎样的关联呢？《煤老板自述三十年:煤老板眼中的世道与人生》作者老五作为煤老板中的一员，为你开辟一个个崭新的视角，给出对煤老板零距离的全新围观。

它有着黝黑丑陋的外表，它是那些曾经统治地球的生物高度浓缩后的遗迹，它用燃烧所得的一切构建着我们的居住地，使之充满了光明和动力。
煤就是这样，提供了足以改变地球的能量，却也有着不可预知的危险，让使用它的人付出高昂的代价：无数矿工地狱般的悲惨生活，全球范围内严重的环境污染……一度让人把它与疾病、死亡和魔鬼串联在一起。
这本书里，煤就像一个被束缚的黑色精灵，撩开中世纪神秘的面纱，让我们看到：
在生存环境黑暗恶劣的矿井里，那些致命的毒气如何出其不意地置人于死地？
19世纪的曼彻斯特，在以煤为燃料的巨大生产能力的驱动下，成了怎样一个污水横流、黑暗混乱的重工业城市？
美国的工业化进程从哪里开始？与煤的开采发现和充足供应有着怎样必然的关系？
为人类带来光明和动力的煤，为何成为饱受争议的产业，并逐步退出历史舞台？
本书作者巴巴拉•弗里兹以客观宏大的视角，揭示了煤在人类发展进程中的巨大制动力和致命破坏力。毋庸置疑的是，煤虽然具有许多缺陷，但却带领人类穿越了漫长的工业童年时代，并赐予了人类力量来建设一个不再需要煤的生活环境。

From 1868–1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s, European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove integral to the struggle for political control of China.
Geology served both as the handmaiden to European imperialism and the rallying point of Chinese resistance to Western encroachment. In the late nineteenth century both foreign powers and the Chinese viewed control over mineral resources as the key to modernization and industrialization. When the first China Geological Survey began work in the 1910s, conceptions of natural resources had already shifted, and the Qing state expanded its control over mining rights, setting the precedent for the subsequent Republican and People's Republic of China regimes.
In Empires of Coal, Shellen Xiao Wu argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of science and industrialization destabilized global systems and caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around the world.