"This is a book about the improbable: seeking legal relief for environmental pollution in contemporary China. It is a story involving judges, lawyers, and international groups as well as the individuals who file civil environmental lawsuits, people such as the village doctor who spent well over a decade suing a local chemical plant. The book offers a close-to-the-ground account of everyday justice and the factors that shape it. In a country known...

"One day in the small Mississippi town of Laurel, a 26-year-old expectant mom named Karen Street sat down at the edge of her bathtub--and felt her hip split in two. The episode was so bizarre it wasn't until later, after she saw the doctor, that she realized her bone disease was almost certainly linked to her father-in-law's business. Winston Street ran a machine shop that drilled the gunk out of pipes used by Chevron, Shell and other giants of the...

"Erin Brockovich meets Dark Waters in this propulsive and heart-wrenching legal drama set in Appalachian coal country, as one determined lawyer confronts a coal industry giant in a battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community--from Wall Street Journal reporter Kris Maher. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn't look, smell, or taste right. Could it be the root of the health problems--from kidney stones...