Born in New York in 1909, Milton Rogovin has been photographing coal miners since 1962. Men and women portrayed at a mine entrance, covered in coal dust, are barely recognizable in the accompanying photographs, where they stand in their own homes. This text presents more than 100 of these powerful images.

The life stories of many individuals are woven together to tell the history of the American West from the earliest days of westward expansion to the twentieth century.