Mining North America

J. R. McNeill is Professor of History and University Professor at Georgetown University. His most recent books are The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 and Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. George Vrtis is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Carleton College.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Of Mines, Minerals, and North American Environmental HistoryGeorge Vrtis and J. R. McNeillPART ONE. CAPITALIST TRANSFORMATIONS1. Exhausting the Sierra Madre: Mining Ecologies in Mexico over the Longue DuréeDaviken Studnicki-Gizbert2. Reconstructing the Environmental History of Colonial Mining: The Real del Catorce Mining District, Northeastern New Spain/Mexico, Eighteenth and Nineteenth CenturiesAntonio Avalos-Lozano and Miguel Aguilar-RobledoPART TWO. INDUSTRIAL CATALYSTS3. A World of Mines and Mills: Precious-Metals Mining, Industrialization, and the Nature of the Colorado Front RangeGeorge Vrtis4. Consequences of the Comstock: The Remaking of Working Environments on America’s Largest Silver Strike, 1859–1880Robert N. Chester III5. Dust to Dust: The Colorado Coal Mine Explosion Crisis of 1910Thomas G. Andrews6. Copper and Longhorns: Material and Human Power in Montana’s Smelter Smoke War, 1860–1910Timothy James LeCain7. Efficiency, Economics, and Environmentalism: Low-Grade Iron Ore Mining in the Lake Superior District, 1913–2010Jeffrey T. ManuelPART THREE. HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE8. Mining the Atom: Uranium in the Twentieth-Century American WestEric Mogren9. A Comparative Case Study of Uranium Mine and Mill Tailings Regulation in Canada and the United StatesRobynne Mellor10. The Giant Mine’s Long Shadow: Arsenic Pollution and Native People in Yellowknife, Northwest TerritoriesJohn Sandlos and Arn Keeling11. Iron Mines, Toxicity, and Indigenous Communities in the Lake Superior BasinNancy Langston12. If the Rivers Ran South: Tar Sands and the State of the Canadian NationSteven M. Hoffman13. Quebec Asbestos: Triumph and Collapse, 1879–1983Jessica van HorssenAfterword: Mining, Memory, and HistoryAndrew C. IsenbergContributorsIndex

"Mining North America (un)covers a lot of ground. It also succeeds at its major task: describing the intertwined social and environmental consequences of mining . . . [it] will prove an effective resource for those who want to better understand environmental change on a continental scale."