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BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press
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 "American way of life." 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.
This guidebook of historic iron-production sites is designed to give the reader a factual and illuminating look at the people and events that shaped Birmingham into one of America’s leading steel centers. Iron & Steel is heavily illustrated with both color and historical black-and-white photographs. It can be used while visiting parks or read as a coherent volume before or after a visit.
The book contains chapters devoted to the larger preserved sites open to the public, such as Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark and Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. It also highlights lesser-known, yet still accessible, sites such as Blocton Coke Ovens Park. The work provides easy-to-follow maps for every site as well as driving directions to the more remote locations, giving visitors easy access to all the notable iron and steel sites in Jefferson, Shelby, Tuscaloosa, and Bibb counties. Each chapter also includes a variety of historical information, with accompanying photographs, in order to present the reader with a detailed and comprehensive account of the Birmingham Iron and Steel District.
Featured sites include: Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park; Shelby Ironworks Park; Billy Gould Coke Ovens Park; Brierfield Ironworks Historical State Park; Oxmoor Furnace Site; Irondale Furnace Park; Helena Rolling Mill Site; Red Mountain Park, Iron Ore Mines; Lewisburg Coke Ovens Park; Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark; Ruffner Mountain Nature Center; Blocton Coke Ovens Park; and Vulcan Park and Museum.
Go to resource on all the furnaces that made Alabama internationally significant in the iron and steel industry
This work is the first and remains the only source of information on all blast furnaces built and operated in Alabama, from the first known charcoal furnace of 1815 (Cedar Creek Furnace in Franklin County) to the coke-fired giants built before the onset of the Great Depression. Woodward surveys the iron industry from the early, small local market furnaces through the rise of the iron industry in support of the Confederate war effort, to the giant internationally important industry that developed in the 1890s. The bulk of the book consists of individual illustrated histories of all blast furnaces ever constructed and operated in the state, furnaces that went into production and four that were built but never went into blast.
Written to provide a record of every blast furnace built in Alabama from 1815 to 1940, this book was widely acclaimed and today remains one of the most quoted references on the iron and steel industry.
Set in the ruins of his family’s strip-mined homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, award-winning journalist and historian Jeff Biggers delivers a deeply personal portrait of the overlooked human and environmental costs of our nation’s dirty energy policy. Beginning with the policies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, chronicling the removal of Native Americans and the hidden story of legally sanctioned black slavery in the land of Lincoln, Reckoning at Eagle Creek vividly describes the mining wars for union recognition and workplace safety, and the devastating consequences of industrial strip-mining. At the heart of our national debate over climate change and the crucial transition toward clean energy, Biggers exposes the fallacy of “clean coal” and shatters the marketing myth that southern Illinois represents the “Saudi Arabia of coal.”
Reckoning at Eagle Creek is ultimately an exposé of “historicide,” one that traces coal’s harrowing legacy through the great American family saga of sacrifice and resiliency and the extraordinary process of recovering our nation’s memory.
What happens when fossil fuels run out? How do communities and cultures survive?
Central Appalachia and south Wales were built to extract coal, and faced with coal’s decline, both regions have experienced economic depression, labor unrest, and out-migration. After Coal focuses on coalfield residents who chose not to leave, but instead remained in their communities and worked to build a diverse and sustainable economy. It tells the story of four decades of exchange between two mining communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and profiles individuals and organizations that are undertaking the critical work of regeneration.
The stories in this book are told through interviews and photographs collected during the making of After Coal, a documentary film produced by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University and directed by Tom Hansell. Considering resonances between Appalachia and Wales in the realms of labor, environment, and movements for social justice, the book approaches the transition from coal as an opportunity for marginalized people around the world to work toward safer and more egalitarian futures.
Death Underground: The Centralia and West Frankfort Mine Disasters examines two of the most devastating coal mine disasters in United States history since 1928. In two southern Illinois towns only forty miles apart, explosions killed 111 men at the Centralia No. 5 mine in 1947 and 119 men at the New Orient No. 2 mine in West Frankfort in 1951. Robert E. Hartley and David Kenney explain the causes of the accidents, identify who was to blame, and detail the emotional impact the disasters had on the survivors, their families, and their communities.
Politics at the highest level of Illinois government played a critical role in the conditions that led to the accidents. Hartley and Kenney address how safety was compromised when inspection reports were widely ignored by state mining officials and mine company supervisors. Highlighted is the role of Driscoll Scanlan, a state inspector at Centralia, who warned of an impending disaster but whose political enemies shifted the blame to him, ruining his career. Hartley and Kenney also detail the New Orient No. 2 mine explosion, the attempts at rescue, and the resulting political spin circulated by labor, management, and the state bureaucracy. They outline the investigation, the subsequent hearings, and the efforts in Congress to legislate greater mine safety.
Hartley and Kenney include interviews with the survivors, a summary of the investigative records, and an analysis of the causes of both mine accidents. They place responsibility for the disasters on individual mine owners, labor unions, and state officials, providing new interpretations not previously presented in the literature. Augmented by twenty-nine illustrations, the volume also covers the history, culture, and ethnic pluralism of coal mining in Illinois and the United States.
The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History first appeared in 1963, a little book by a man with no training as either a writer or a historian. Since then, this volume has become an essential sourcebook, consulted and quoted in nearly every study of coal field history. The surprising impact and durability of the book are due to both the information in it and the personality behind it. Through the first half of the twentieth century, William Purviance Tams lived coal. Rising from a young coal engineer to a senior coal baron, Tams stood at the center of Southern West Virginia industrialization. When he sold his company in 1955, Tams was the last of the old owner-operators, men with no personal or financial interest outside of coal. Tams wrote a book which could only have come from an ultimate insider. The everyday work of mining coal is here-laying track, blasting and loading the coal. So is the everyday business of coal, from sinking shafts and ventilating the work area, to administering a town and keeping the workers happy.
Tams gives the financial details of the volatile business, and offers capsule biographies of the other major developers of the Southern West Virginia coal fields. It was a passion for Tams. He never married, and tended his business and his town with paternal care. After retirement, this industrial baron spent his final decades in a modest bungalow in his little coal-camp community, watching the town he had built fade back into the mountains. It is W. P. Tams's passion and attitude, as much as his place at the center of history, which make The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia worth reading nearly 40 years after its first publication. Tams's 1963 account of his career, The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia, offers a unique perspective on the business and the life of coal mining. The book is especially valuable for its account of the daily life and work of the miners, engineers, and families in the mines and in the mining towns. Our reprint of this fascinating and important book combines Tams's original work with a new introduction by Ronald D. Eller, author of Miners, Millhands, & Mountaineers.
As a function of its corporate duties, the Consolidation Coal Company, one of the largest coal-mining operations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, had photographers take hundreds of pictures of nearly every facet of its operations. Whether for publicity images, safety procedures, or archival information, these photographs create a record that goes far beyond the purpose the company intended.
In Extracting Appalachia, geographer Geoffrey L. Buckley examines the company’s photograph collection housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Included in the collection are images of mine openings, mining equipment, and mine accidents, as well as scenes of the company towns, including schools, churches, recreational facilities, holiday celebrations, and company stores.
Although the photographs in the collection provide us with valuable insights, they tell only part of the story. Using company records, state and federal government documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other archival materials, Professor Buckley shows that these photographs reveal much more than meets the eye.
Extracting Appalachia places these historic mining images in their social, cultural, and historical context, uncovering the true value and meaning of this rare documentary record.
On April 20, 2010, the crew of the floating drill rig Deepwater Horizon lost control of the Macondo oil well forty miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Escaping gas and oil ignited, destroying the rig, killing eleven crew members, and injuring dozens more. The emergency spiraled into the worst human-made economic and ecological disaster in Gulf Coast history.
Senior systems engineers Earl Boebert and James Blossom offer the most comprehensive account to date of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Sifting through a mountain of evidence generated by the largest civil trial in U.S. history, the authors challenge the commonly accepted explanation that the crew, operating under pressure to cut costs, made mistakes that were compounded by the failure of a key safety device. This explanation arose from legal, political, and public relations maneuvering over the billions of dollars in damages that were ultimately paid to compensate individuals and local businesses and repair the environment. But as this book makes clear, the blowout emerged from corporate and engineering decisions which, while individually innocuous, combined to create the disaster.
Rather than focusing on blame, Boebert and Blossom use the complex interactions of technology, people, and procedures involved in the high-consequence enterprise of offshore drilling to illustrate a systems approach which contributes to a better understanding of how similar disasters emerge and how they can be prevented.
Winner of the Wallace Stegner Prize in Environmental Humanities
In late 2012, more than one hundred people gathered to hear a long-awaited announcement: the Trust for Public Land had succeeded in preventing natural gas development in the remote Hoback Basin of Wyoming. This landmark agreement—purchasing leases from Plains Exploration Company—would not have come to pass without the extraordinary will and expertise of local citizens. Unchallenged, the proposed natural gas development in the national forest near the hamlet of Bondurant, Wyoming, would have brought roads, pipelines, water and air pollution, and a complete change in the character of the landscape and its communities.
Saving Wyoming's Hoback tells the story of the Hoback and Noble Basins in northwestern Wyoming and of the citizens who worked together to protect the land that they loved. Retired schoolteachers, mine workers, big game hunting outfitters, and other stakeholders brought together their knowledge of the area to achieve a single goal: to prevent the industrialization of the wild country that was their home. While some disagreed about specifics, their work as individuals and as coalitions is an inspiring example of how determined citizens can make a difference.
Africa supplies the majority of the world’s diamonds, yet consumers generally know little about the origins and history of these precious stones beyond sensationalized media accounts of so-called blood diamonds.
Stones of Contention explores the major developments in the remarkable history of Africa’s diamonds, from the earliest stirrings of international interest in the continent’s mineral wealth in the first millennium A.D. to the present day. In the European colonial period, the discovery of diamonds in South Africa ushered in an era of unprecedented greed during which monopolistic enterprises exploited both the mineral resources and the indigenous workforce. In the aftermath of World War II, the governments of newly independent African states, both democratic and despotic, joined industry giant De Beers and other corporations to oversee and profit from mining activity on the continent.
The book also considers the experiences of a wide array of Africans—from informal artisanal miners, company mineworkers, and indigenous authorities to armed rebels, mining executives, and premiers of mineral-rich states—and their relationships to the stones that have the power to bring both wealth and misery. With photos and maps, Stones of Contention illustrates the scope and complexity of the African diamond trade as well as its impact on individuals and societies.
Iran’s nuclear program has generated intense controversy ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2003 that Iran was secretly pursuing enrichment activities. Although Iranian officials insist the program is peaceful, many in the international community are skeptical of Iran’s stated aims—and some allege there is no greater nuclear-weapons proliferation danger in the world today.
Nuclear Iran guides readers through the intricate maze of science and secrecy that lies at the heart of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Writing for the general reader, Jeremy Bernstein brings his knowledge as a physicist to bear on the issues, offering elucidations of the scientific principles and technical hurdles involved in creating nuclear reactors and bombs. His explanations range from the physics of fission to methods of isotope separation to the technologies required for weaponizing fissile uranium and plutonium. Iran’s construction of centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade uranium has received much media attention, and Bernstein explains how these complex devices work. He intersperses many elements of the human story into his discussions of technology, such as the fact that centrifuges were first invented by German war prisoners working in the Soviet Union.
Nuclear Iran turns a spotlight on the controversial underground uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz and heavy water reactor in Arak, and profiles key figures in the ongoing international trade in weapons technology, including the Pakistani physicist A. Q. Khan. This succinct book is timely reading for anyone who wishes to understand the science behind the international crisis surrounding Iran’s nuclear program.
After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, his second declaration, after socialism, was that Cuba would become a leader in international science. In biotechnology he would be proven right and, today, Cuba counts a meningitis B vaccine and cutting-edge cancer therapies to its name. But how did this politically and geographically isolated country make such impressive advances? Drawing on a unique ethnography, and blending the insights of anthropology, sociology, and geography, The Cuban Cure shows how Cuba came to compete with U. S. pharmaceutical giants—despite a trade embargo and crippling national debt.
In uncovering what is distinct about Cuban biomedical science, S. M. Reid-Henry examines the forms of resistance that biotechnology research in Cuba presents to the globalization of western models of scientific culture and practice. He illustrates the epistemic, social, and ideological clashes that take place when two cultures of research meet, and how such interactions develop as political and economic circumstances change. Through a novel argument about the intersection of socioeconomic systems and the nature of innovation, The Cuban Cure presents an illuminating study of politics and science in the context of globalization.
Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different—and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area—the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them.
In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts—up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world.
Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson’s thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.
Some of humankind's greatest tools have been forged in the research laboratory. Who could argue that medical advances like antibiotics, blood transfusions, and pacemakers have not improved the quality of people's lives? But with each new technological breakthrough there comes an array of consequences, at once predicted and unpredictable, beneficial and hazardous.
Outcry over recent developments in the reproductive and genetic sciences has revealed deep fissures in society's perception of biotechnical progress. Many are concerned that reckless technological development, driven by consumerist impulses and greedy entrepreneurialism, has the potential to radically shift the human condition—and not for the greater good. Biotechnology and the Human Good builds a case for a stewardship deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian theism to responsibly interpret and assess new technologies in a way that answers this concern.
The authors jointly recognize humans not as autonomous beings but as ones accountable to each other, to the world they live in, and to God. They argue that to question and critique how fields like cybernetics, nanotechnology, and genetics might affect our future is not anti-science, anti-industry, or anti-progress, but rather a way to promote human flourishing, common sense, and good stewardship.
A synthetic work drawing on the thought of a physician, ethicists, and a theologian, Biotechnology and the Human Good reminds us that although technology is a powerful and often awe-inspiring tool, it is what lies in the heart and soul of who wields this tool that truly makes the difference in our world.
Developments in biotechnology, such as cloning and the decoding of the human genome, are generating questions and choices that traditionally have fallen within the realm of religion and philosophy: the definition of human life, human vs. divine control of nature, the relationship between human and non-human life, and the intentional manipulation of the mechanisms of life and death.
In Claiming Power over Life, eight contributors challenge policymakers to recognize the value of religious views on biotechnology and discuss how best to integrate the wisdom of the Christian and Jewish traditions into public policy debates. Arguing that civic discourse on the subject has been impoverished by an inability to accommodate religious insights productively, they identify the ways in which religious thought can contribute to policymaking. Likewise, the authors challenge religious leaders and scholars to learn about biotechnology, address the central issues it raises, and participate constructively in the moral debates it engenders.
The book will be of value to policymakers, religious leaders, ethicists, and all those interested in issues surrounding the intersection of religion and biotechnology policy.
Contributors. Timothy Choy, Joseph Dumit, Michael M. J. Fischer, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Donna Haraway, Sheila Jasanoff, Wen-Hua Kuo, Andrew Lakoff, Kristin Peterson, Chloe Silverman, Elta Smith, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Travis J. Tanner
With genetically modified crops we have entered uncharted territory--where visions of the triumph of biotechnology in agriculture vie with dire views of medical and environmental disaster. For two years Mark L. Winston traveled this fraught territory at home and abroad, listening to farmers, industry spokespeople, regulators, and researchers, canvassing high-security laboratories, environmentalist enclaves, and cyberspace, making a thorough survey of the facts, opinions, and practices deployed by opponents and proponents of transgenic crops.
Through his sympathetic portrayal of the passions on all sides, Winston brings a clear, unbiased perspective to this bewildering landscape. Traveling with Winston, we see the excitement and curiosity that pervade laboratories developing genetically modified crops, as well as the panic and outrage among dedicated opponents of agricultural biotechnology; the desperation of conventional farmers as they look to science for solutions to the problems driving them from their farms, as well as the deeply held values of organic farmers who dread the incursion of genetically modified crops into their expanding enterprise. And, Winston shows us, these contrasting attitudes transcend national borders, with troubling counterparts and consequences in the developing world.
As he seeks a middle ground where concerns about genetic engineering can be rationally discussed and resolved, Winston gives us, at long last, a full and balanced view of the forces at play in the chaotic debate over agricultural biotechnology.
Not so fast, says Joseph Romm. In The Hype about Hydrogen, he explains why hydrogen isn't the quick technological fix it's cracked up to be, and why cheering for fuel cells to sweep the market is not a viable strategy for combating climate change. Buildings and factories powered by fuel cells may indeed become common after 2010, Joseph Romm argues, but when it comes to transportation, the biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions, hydrogen is unlikely to have a significant impact before 2050.
The Hype about Hydrogen offers a hype-free explanation of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, takes a hard look at the practical difficulties of transitioning to a hydrogen economy, and reveals why, given increasingly strong evidence of the gravity of climate change, neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term. Romm, who helped run the federal government's program on hydrogen and fuel cells during the Clinton administration, provides a provocative primer on the politics, business, and technology of hydrogen and climate protection.
Fireworks are synonymous with celebration in the twenty-first century. But pyrotechnics—in the form of rockets, crackers, wheels, and bombs—have exploded in sparks and noise to delight audiences in Europe ever since the Renaissance. Here, Simon Werrett shows that, far from being only a means of entertainment, fireworks helped foster advances in natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and many other branches of the sciences.
Fireworks brings to vibrant life the many artful practices of pyrotechnicians, as well as the elegant compositions of the architects, poets, painters, and musicians they inspired. At the same time, it uncovers the dynamic relationships that developed between the many artists and scientists who produced pyrotechnics. In so doing, the book demonstrates the critical role that pyrotechnics played in the development of physics, astronomy, chemistry and physiology, meteorology, and electrical science. Richly illustrated and drawing on a wide range of new sources, Fireworks takes readers back to a world where pyrotechnics were both divine and magical and reveals for the first time their vital contribution to the modernization of European ideas.
Energy Culture is a provocative book about oil’s firm grip on our politics and everyday lives. It brings together essays and artwork produced in a collaborative environment to stimulate new ways of thinking and to achieve a more just and sustainable world.
The original work collected in Energy Culture creatively engages energy as a social form through lively arguments and artistic research organized around three vectors of inquiry. The first maps how fossil fuels became, and continue to be, embedded in North American society, from the ideology of tar sands reclamation projects to dreams of fiber optic cables running through the Northwest Passage. The second comprises creative and artistic responses to the dominance of fossil fuels in everyday life and to the challenge of realizing new energy cultures. The final section addresses the conceptual and political challenges posed by energy transition and calls into question established views on energy. Its contributions caution against solar capitalism, explore the politics of sabotage, and imagine an energy efficient transportation system called “the switch.” Imbued with a sense of urgency and hope, Energy Culture exposes the deep imbrications of energy and culture while pointing provocatively to ways of thinking and living otherwise.
Everything is subject to a lifecycle. In the field of energy, the obvious question is, “Where are we in the lifecycle of fossil fuels?” Competitive technology for sourcing renewable energy, marketplace readiness, and pressures from climate change all signal that the fossil fuel era is coming to an end. This book explains the alternatives and suggests when and how change will occur. Employing a global perspective and detailed analysis, it provides recommendations on policies and strategies to make a smooth and wholesale transition to renewables before the continued use of fossil fuels becomes economically and socially disruptive.
Gregory Meehan’s overview eschews politics in favor of comprehensive coverage and logical explanation. He addresses economic, environmental, and security concerns and does not shy away from illuminating limitations and problems with various energy sources. Meehan’s dogged pursuit of the current state of knowledge and energy practices around the world shows that different answers are proving viable for different social and environmental contexts. This is the most wide-ranging and thorough introduction to the world’s energy issues and choices to date.
Lecture and exercise guides available upon request.
Click here to hear the Friends of the Marriott Library event with Gregory Meehan. https://youtu.be/YqmNhEN09_c
Ai Hisano exposes how corporations, the American government, and consumers shaped the colors of what we eat and even the colors of what we consider “natural,” “fresh,” and “wholesome.”
The yellow of margarine, the red of meat, the bright orange of “natural” oranges—we live in the modern world of the senses created by business. Ai Hisano reveals how the food industry capitalized on color, and how the creation of a new visual vocabulary has shaped what we think of the food we eat. Constructing standards for the colors of food and the meanings we associate with them—wholesome, fresh, uniform—has been a business practice since the late nineteenth century, though one invisible to consumers. Under the growing influences of corporate profit and consumer expectations, firms have sought to control our sensory experiences ever since.
Visualizing Taste explores how our perceptions of what food should look like have changed over the course of more than a century. By examining the development of color-controlling technology, government regulation, and consumer expectations, Hisano demonstrates that scientists, farmers, food processors, dye manufacturers, government officials, and intermediate suppliers have created a version of “natural” that is, in fact, highly engineered. Retailers and marketers have used scientific data about color to stimulate and influence consumers’—and especially female consumers’—sensory desires, triggering our appetites and cravings. Grasping this pivotal transformation in how we see, and how we consume, is critical to understanding the business of food.
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press
