Synopses & Reviews
'
\"Timothy LeCain\'s Mass Destruction is a thoroughly researched, elegantly reasoned study by one well-qualified to do so. LeCain has provided a well-integrated look at the environmental cost of America\'s burgeoning consumerism, with specific emphasis on copper.\"Utah Historical Quarterly\"In examining the history of one mining industry, LeCain funnels a great deal of American history and culture into his narrative, resulting in a work that should catch a broad audience, from Old West history buffs to environmentalists.\"
Publishers Weekly, starred review\"[A] most entertaining and informative book.\"
Earth Justice\"LeCain writes skillfully and eloquently about the history, the engineering challenges, the successes of production and resulting consumption, and the environmental consequences of open-pit copper mining, mainly in the first half of the 20th century. With clarity and reason, LeCain analyzes this undeniable and inextricable connection between the technology of producing nature\'s raw materials and human and environmental imperatives. This book provokes serious second thoughts about the future of the exploitation of nature\'s bounty, and it should appeal to a wide audience, especially modern resource companies and conservationists. Highly recommended.\"
Choice\"Timothy LeCain analyzes the environmental impact of open pit mining, including its ongoing devastation of nature. Both a historical chronology of the open pit mining industry in the western U.S. and a thoughtful essay on the economic drivers behind it, LeCain provides a compelling story.\"
Wildlife Activist\"Written in a clear, straightforward style, Mass Destruction focuses our attention on the mining of copper--an industry both essential to the electrical age and ruinous to the environment. In so doing, LeCain shows the interconnections between the natural world of raw materials and the human world of technologies and commodities.\"
Andrew Isenberg, author of Mining California: An Ecological History\"The colossal open-pit mines of the past century have left behind some of the largest artifacts on the face of the earth. Timothy LeCain\'s engaging history of this mega-industrial enterprise is remarkable for its insight, clarity, and wisdom. Readers interested in the contours of our technological and environmental past--and the inextricable connections between the natural and artificial--will find Mass Destruction a treasure trove of reasoning and enlightenment.\"
Jeffrey K. Stine, author of America\'s Forested Wetlands: From Wasteland to Valued Resource\"This is an eloquent and searing portrait of the environmental cost of the coins in our pockets and wires in our walls. As Timothy LeCain argues in this hard-hitting book, the quest for efficiency that gave us mass production and mass consumption also brought us mass destruction of the environment.\"
Edmund Russell, University of Virginia'
Review
andquot;The colossal open-pit mines of the past century have left behind some of the largest artifacts on the face of the earth. Timothy LeCain's engaging history of this mega-industrial enterprise is remarkable for its insight, clarity, and wisdom. Readers interested in the contours of our technological and environmental pastandmdash;and the inextricable connections between the natural and artificialandmdash;will find Mass Destruction a treasure trove of reasoning and enlightenment.andquot;
Review
andquot;This is an eloquent and searing portrait of the environmental cost of the coins in our pockets and wires in our walls. As Timothy LeCain argues in this hard-hitting book, the quest for efficiency that gave us mass production and mass consumption also brought us mass destruction of the environment.andquot;
Review
"[A] most entertaining and informative book."Earth Justice
Review
andquot;Mass Destruction is a thoroughly researched, elegantly reasoned study by one well-qualified to do so. LeCain has provided a well-integrated look at the environmental cost of America's burgeoning consumerism, with specific emphasis on copper.andquot;
Review
andquot;In examining the history of one mining industry, LeCain funnels a great deal of American history and culture into his narrative, resulting in a work that should catch a broad audience, from Old West history buffs to environmentalists.andquot;
Review
andquot;LeCain writes skillfully and eloquently about the history, the engineering challenges, the successes of production and resulting consumption, and the environmental consequences of open-pit copper mining, mainly in the first half of the 20th century. With clarity and reason, LeCain analyzes this undeniable and inextricable connection between the technology of producing nature's raw materials and human and environmental imperatives. This book provokes serious second thoughts about the future of the exploitation of nature's bounty, and it should appeal to a wide audience, especially modern resource companies and conservationists. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Timothy LeCain analyzes the environmental impact of open pit mining, including its ongoing devastation of nature. Both a historical chronology of the open pit mining industry in the western U.S. and a thoughtful essay on the economic drivers behind it, LeCain provides a compelling story.andquot;
Review
andquot;Written in a clear, straightforward style, Mass Destruction focuses our attention on the mining of copperandmdash;an industry both essential to the electrical age and ruinous to theenvironment. In so doing, LeCain shows the interconnections between the natural world of raw materials and the human world of technologies and commodities.andquot;
Review
"
Mass Destruction is a highly readable and intellectually engaging text that will help to shape the future direction of a range of subfields from environmental to economic history and beyond."
Environmental History
Review
"A most entertaining and informative book." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
and#8220;Comprehensive and incisive,
Downwind also adds heart and soul to an epic story of resilience in the aftermath of reckless arrogance. Sarah Fox gives the history of the nuclear age back to the people who had it written in their bones. The testimony she captured is both shocking and inspiring.and#8221;and#8212;Chip Ward, author of
Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the Westand#160;
Review
and#8220;In this incredibly important book, Sarah Alisabeth Fox effectively shows how the stories of regular people are to be trusted more than the words of the government and the experts when the latter are lying in a misguided attempt to protect national security.and#8221;and#8212;Doug Brugge, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine
Review
andquot;A terrific piece of work, Fergusonandrsquo;s book seamlessly blends narrative and analysis in a lively writing style, and shows the ways that we can collect, organize, and make sense of critical moments from our recent environmental past. A must-read for scholars of American environmentalism.andquot;
Review
andquot;A most entertaining and informative book.andquot;
Review
andquot;Cody Ferguson effectively shows us how three grassroots environmental groups, from the Northern Plains to the Southwest and the Cumberland Mountains, are emblematic of the hundreds of groups seeking democratic change, if not radical environmental transformation.andquot;
Review
andquot;Combining the intricacies of the official record with the complicated narratives of the individuals she interviewed, Fox provides texture and insight into becoming and being downwind within the framework of both nuclear testing and uranium mining.andquot;andmdash;Leisl Carr Childers, Environmental History
Synopsis
Mass Destruction is the compelling story of Daniel Jackling and the development of open-pit hard rock mining, its role in the wiring of an electrified America, and its devastating environmental effects. This new method of mining, complimenting the mass production and mass consumption that came to define the "American way of life"in the early twentieth century, promised infinite supplies of copper and other natural resources. LeCain deftly analyzes how open-pit mining continues to adversely effect the environment and how, as the world begins to rival American resource consumption, no viable alternatives have emerged.
Synopsis
The place: The steep mountains outside Salt Lake City.
The time: The first decade of the twentieth century.
The man: Daniel Jackling, a young metallurgical engineer.
The goal: A bold new technology that could provide billions of pounds of cheap copper for a rapidly electrifying America.
The result: Bingham's enormous andquot;Glory Hole,andquot; the first large-scale open-pit copper mine, an enormous chasm in the earth and one of the largest humanmade artifacts on the planet.
Mass Destruction is the compelling story of Jackling and the development of open-pit hard rock mining, its role in the wiring of an electrified America, as well its devastating environmental consequences.
Mass destruction mining soon spread around the nation and the globe, providing raw materials essential to the mass production and mass consumption that increasingly defined the emerging andquot;American way of life.andquot; At the dawn of the last century, Jackling's open pit replaced immense but constricted underground mines that probed nearly a mile beneath the earth, to become the ultimate symbol of the modern faith that science and technology could overcome all natural limits. A new culture of mass destruction emerged that promised nearly infinite supplies not only of copper, but also of coal, timber, fish, and other natural resources.
But, what were the consequences? Timothy J. LeCain deftly analyzes how open-pit mining continues to affect the environment in its ongoing devastation of nature and commodification of the physical world. The nation's largest toxic Superfund site would be one effect, as well as other types of environmental dead zones around the globe. Yet today, as the world's population races toward American levels of resource consumption, truly viable alternatives to the technology of mass destruction have not yet emerged.
Synopsis
Downwind is an unflinching tale of the atomic West that reveals the intentional disregard for human and animal life through nuclear testing by the federal government and uranium extraction by mining corporations during and after the Cold War.
and#160;
Sarah Alisabeth Fox highlights the personal cost of nuclear testing and uranium extraction in the American West through extensive interviews with and#8220;downwinders,and#8221; the Native American and non-Native residents of the Great Basin region affected by nuclear environmental contamination and nuclear-testing fallout. These downwinders tell tales of communities ravaged by cancer epidemics, farmers and ranchers economically ruined by massive crop and animal deaths, and Native miners working in dangerous conditions without proper safety equipment so that the government could surreptitiously study the effects of radiation on humans.
In chilling detail Downwind brings to light the stories and concerns of these groups whose voices have been silenced and marginalized for decades in the name of and#8220;patriotismand#8221; and and#8220;national security.and#8221;
With the renewed boom in mining in the American West, Foxand#8217;s look at this hidden history, unearthed from years of field interviews, archival research, and epidemiological studies, is a must-read for every American concerned about the fate of our western lands and communities.
Synopsis
In This is Our Land, environmental historian Cody Ferguson documents a little-noted but important change in the environmental movement, describing three representative grassroots groupsandmdash;in Montana, Arizona, and Tennesseeandmdash;whose stories show how quite ordinary citizens can band together to solve environmental problems. As they did, they redefined political participation and expanded the ability of citizens to shape their world.and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
In the last three decades of the twentieth century, the environmental movement experienced a quiet revolution. In This is Our Land, Cody Ferguson documents this little-noted change as he describes the efforts of three representative grassroots groupsandmdash;in Montana, Arizona, and Tennesseeandmdash;revealing how quite ordinary citizens fought to solve environmental problems.and#160;and#160;Here are stories of common people who, confronting environmental threats to the health and safety of their families and communities, bonded together to protect their interests. These stories include successes and failures as citizens learned how to participate in their democracy and redefined what participation meant. Equally important, Ferguson describes how several laws passed in the seventiesandmdash;such as the National Environmental Policy Actandmdash;gave citizens the opportunity and the tools to fight for the environment. These laws gave people a say in the decisions that affected the world around them, including the air they breathed, the water they drank, the land on which they made their living, and the communities they called home. Moreover, Ferguson shows that through their experiences over the course of the 1970s, andlsquo;80s, and andlsquo;90s, these citizen activists broadened their understanding of andldquo;this is our landandrdquo; to mean andldquo;this is our community, this is our country, this is our democracy, and this is our planet.andrdquo; As they did, they redefined political participation and expanded the ability of citizens to shape their world.and#160;and#160;Challenging us to see activism in a new way, This is Our Land recovers the stories of often-unseen citizens who have been vitally important to the environmental movement. It will inspire readers to confront environmental threats and make our world a safer, more just, and more sustainable place to live. and#160; and#160;and#160;and#160;
About the Author
Timothy J. LeCain is an assistant professor in the department of history at Montana State University and a historical consultant and expert witness in environmental litigation for the United States Department of Justice.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
In the Lands of Mass Destruction
Between the Heavens and the Earth
The Stack
Mass Destruction
The Dead Zones
Epilogue: From New Delhi to the New West
Notes
Index