I've read a couple of books on just the Battle- doubt I've read them all- but I haven't been too happy with them so far. There's a lot of things that led up to Blair Mountain: the decline in the market for coal, after the boom of WWI, that had mine owners in the Southern Appalachians reluctant to deal with unions; the pressure northern mine owners put on the union to extract the same concessions from the southern mine owners that had been extracted from them , which could otherwise put them at a competitive disadvantage. And, above all, the mine owners being able to act with not only impunity but with the complete cooperation of the WV government- where did that come from? Lon Savage's 1990 Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War 1920-21 does a reasonable job of covering the background. The prose is a little over-wrought, for my taste. David Corbin's Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields has a broader picture still. and less purple prose. But if you'd like a real notion of how such a thing could ever come to pass, Ronald D Eller's Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: Industrialization in the Appalachian South is a good place to start.