Available From UC Press

 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.

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.

 

"Mining North America is a kaleidoscopic and exhaustive volume that places mining at the center of a cutting-edge historical analysis of human society's relationship with the environment, ranging from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. This unique collection of essays covers an impressive array of interrelated yet heretofore overlooked topics. Vividly written and timely, this book should engage a wide, multidisciplinary audience."—Ryan Dearinger, Associate Professor of History at Eastern Oregon University and author of The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West

"This fascinating exploration of North American mining history fills a gaping hole in the field and illuminates a fraught and wide-ranging struggle to meet our voracious demand for the minerals underlying modern life. From the silver mines of Mexico to the tar sands and gold mines of Canada, Mining North America shows how industrial capitalism reshaped a continent and left behind a toxic legacy of inequalities."—Paul Sabin, author of The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future

"This book advances the argument that mining the earth has been central to modern history. After absorbing its impressive stories and evidence, ranging across a continent‘s incredible mineral wealth, from gold and silver to uranium, iron ore, and bitumen, we can no longer look on mining simply as a romantic and colorful adventure from the past. Mining creates our world, for good or bad. Powerfully convincing!"—Donald Worster, author of Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance