Book Description

Caught in the Sluice is a lively collection of some of the fictional but accurate adventures, heartbreaking to hilarious, that have befallen the men and women who have worked the gold-bearing gravels of Alaska's Interior region. ... Read more

Book Description

This tale of two citiesButte, Montana, and Chuquicamata,Chiletraces the relationship of capitalism and community acrosscultural,national, and geographic boundaries. Combining social history withethnography,Janet Finn shows how the development of copper mining set in motionparallelprocesses involving distinctive constructions of community, class, andgender inthe two widely separated but intimately related sites. While the richveins ofcopper in the Rockies and the Andes flowed for the giant AnacondaCompany, theminers and their families in both places struggled to make a life aswell as aliving for themselves. Miner's consumption, a popular name for silicosis, provides a powerfulmetaphorfor the danger, wasting, and loss that penetrated mining life. Finnexploresthemes of privation and privilege, trust and betrayal, and offers a newmodelfor community studies that links local culture and global capitalism. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Thoroughly researched and written from the heart.
Having grown up in Butte Montana and being very familiar with Ms. Finns work, I cannot say enough about how valuable this book is in terms of telling the long-untold story of women in the mining community.

Her intense and thorough research is extraordinary and her heartfelt personal connection to the subjects she deals with make it an engrossing book. I recommend it to all who would understand the universal plight of women creating culture in a society which chose to largely ignore them - a society that could not have existed without them and their heroic efforts. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great Book!
Great pictures from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. They really brought the rescue alive! I loved the book. ... Read more

Book Description

Blown to Bits in the Mine charts the evolution of the use of explosives for mining and quarrying in North America from the Industrial Revolution into the twentieth century.The art of blasting was of prime importance to mining because explosives enabled miners to move through solid rock as no other technology could.This book presents a detailed look at the whole process of using explosives, from drilling blast-holes to setting off the charges, with an emphasis on technology, material culture, and the impacts to the mine as a work environment.Everyone with a penchant for mining history will enjoy this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Increasingly over the next few decades, the oil and gas industry faces the complex task of decommissioning its offshore platforms, pipelines and sub-sea equipment as they reach the end of their operational capabilities. Decommissioning involves and integrates many distinct aspects: engineering, environmental, economic, legal, political and safety considerations. A practical strategy for removing and disposing these structures needs to be developed which best meets the demands of all of these different aspects. Specialists in these various fields have been brought together for this volume to contribute their assessments of the situation. The result is an important step toward the development of a co-ordinated approach to the subject. It is essential reading for all those who are involved with major decommissioning projects, their possible environmental impact and their implications in politics and law. ... Read more

Book Description

Paperback. MMM'98 was a meeting of scientists and practitioners from all over the world who presented the state-of-the-art in automating the processes of the basic industries and discussed current development trends in this field. 50 full papers and 12 poster shows were presented out of 90 draft papers; 18 of these 62 contributions were dedicated to problems of mining and minerals processing, 34 to metals processing and 10 to general problems of distributed automation systems.These presentations were accompanied by 3 plenary papers which gave surveys on current developments of common interest for the MMM control community and by a panel discussion on the significance of what is called today Computational Intelligence (knowledge based systems, fuzzy logic and control, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and programming) in comparison with conventional control methods.The main topics of the contributions were on one hand the application ... Read more