Jeff Biggers is an American author, journalist, playwright, and performance artist. He is the author of four books, and co-editor of a fifth. His last book, "State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream," came out in the fall of 2012. Selected as a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Title in Social Science, "State Out of the Union" was praised by Kirkus Reviews as "masterful at showing how the past is prologue?A timely book, especially with immigration policy playing a major role in the upcoming presidential campaign.? Biggers is a frequent performer and speaker at festivals, theatres, conferences, universities and schools across the country. As the grandson of a coal miner from southern Illinois, Jeff Biggers has been a vocal critic of mountaintop removal in Appalachia and reckless strip mining across the nation, as well as poorly enforced black lung and mining workplace safety laws, and the fallacy of "clean coal" slogans. Reckoning at Eagle Creek examines the loss of his family's 200-year-old homestead to strip mining, and the historical parallel impact of coal mining on communities and their environment. 

January 1st, 1963 in (Age 61)