A Social Contract for the Coal Fields: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund. By Richard P. Mulcahy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000. Pp xiii, 274. $34.00

This is a book that deserves a wider readership than its title might suggest. More than a narrow history concerning health and pension benefits received by one union, it touches on nearly every issue that has been raised concerning health care and social-security reform. Richard Mulcahy accomplishes this feat through a clearly written narrative history that seldom strays from its basic story line. The story involves the founding, development and demise of medical coverage provided by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Welfare and Retirement Fund. Furthermore Mulcahy provides what might be called a revisionist historical assessment of John L. Lewis, president of the UMWA; specifically that his regime might not have been the “Corrupt Kingdom” described by William Finley (The Corrupt Kingdom. The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972).