Suchergebnisse

"Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the Ludlow Massacre and the Great Coalfield War. In a sweeping story that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews examines the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers' strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers' resistance." "Andrews illuminates the human and environmental transformations that turned a wild Western frontier into a gritty epicenter of union management conflict. Exploring struggles over social and environmental justice in a nation growing increasingly dependent on the fossilized energy that the miners worked to unearth, he makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world."--Jacket

Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly relied on mining to produce much of their material and cultural life. From cell phones and computers to cars, roads, pipes, pans, and even wall tile, mineral-intensive products have become central to North American societies. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and the human societies within it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, forests leveled, and the consequences of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North America. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, Mining North America examines these developments. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while bringing mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history. Taken all together, the essays in this book make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies