mining-industry

Patrick Morris has written an exceptional book detailing Anaconda's unique history. He captures the flavor of a city whose birth was sculpted by the great dreams of pioneer capitalists (those famous warring copper kings) and very hard-working pioneering men and women. To read this history of a town built upon a copper smelting industry, as documented through the prism of Anaconda perspectives--and not just as another sideline adjunct to Butte's storied copper mining--is a long overdue pleasure. This is a very readable book that speaks to Anaconda's importance to the copper mining and smelting industry in Montana.

Seems very factual and concise about the early history of the town, Marcus Daly the man and the Anaconda company. Very interesting and I am sure that everyone will enjoy reading it. Very good insight into the area history.

I bought this book for my grandfather in January of 2000. He immigrated to America with my grandmother and father from Lago, Calabria, Italy and worked as a miner and mine rescue worker in Pennsylvania during the days of H.C. Frick.

He turned 91 in December of 1999, but he vividly remembered his days in those mines until his death in April of 2000, when black lung finally weakened his heart, causing him to pass. Reading this book was one of the final acts of his long, admirable and often difficult life, and he assured me that this book portrays conditions inside the mines and in the company towns very accurately. The book tells the tales of the coal barons, but it is much more. It recalls the coal mining region's contribution to the building of the United States and is a testament to the immigrant spirit of those who made it possible.

This is an historically correct accounting of the beehive coke industry of Fayette and Westmoreland Counties of Pennsylvania (Connellsville Coke Region), which dominated the region from the end of the Civil War until the end of World War Two and was largely responsible for the growth of the Pittsburgh steel industry. Ms. Sheppard tells the story of the Coal Barons and their miners, mostly European immigrants, without taking sides in an issue which continues to this day. Financial manipulations and the growth of the unions are described in great detail. Her account of the rise and fall of Uniontown, Pa. coal baron J.V. Thompson is particularly intriguing, as is the story of Henry Clay Frick, one of America's premier industrialists. A must-read for any student of Pennsylvania mining or industrial history.

This is a superior piece of scholarship that is readable, educational, and troubling. The author grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, son and grandson of coal miners, he worked in the mines long enough to earn college tuition. Now, he looks back on the impact of coal mining on Appalachia, specifically on West Virginia.

His research is excellent; the book is well-organized; most important, the book is readable.

His thesis is simple: Coal companies moved into Appalachia in the 19th century and established themselves in positions of total control of the economy, which led them to total control of politics and people's lives. The author describes this process and the impact on the people, culture, society, and politics of Appalachia -- now the same fate awaits the rest of us.

It is this last part of his thesis that is frightening? At the beginning of the 21st century, we are moving rapidly into a "globalized economy" in which fewer and fewer corporations are in control of more and more of our daily lives. The author uses the last two chapters of his book to compare the control that the coal companies had over Appalachia to the control that corporations are now gaining over the rest of us. He warns us that the fate of Appalachia -- raped by unbridled corporate greed -- likely awaits the rest of us if we do not restrain global corporate power.

A breathtaking and moving account of those who risked their lives for the industrial revolution and were "thanked" with continual exploitation by the industrialists they served. Unforgettable!

This book will function as an excellent cookbook on industrial construction contract administration. Contract language, field notices, change orders, scheduling, etc. are all covered in great detail with easy to follow fill in the blanks forms. This book is a "must have" for plant managers, plant purchasing agents, plant engineers, and construction company managers and supervisors. It is focused on the latest non-computer based communication systems and will work well in most industrial construction settings.

While not directly geared to commercial, and highway and heavy construction, it has lessons presented that will clearly apply to these other construction situations. This book is well-worth the price.

This book was written as a useful guide and reference to help Owner and Contractor personnel, students, and others associated with privately awarded construction contracts to achieve the often elusive goal of completing their contracts successfully (safely, on time, within the budget, meeting design limits, and with no unresolved claims).

The author has worked with Owners and Contractors over the past 50 years in offshore and domestic mining, process, refinery, smelter, petro-chemical, and environmental improvement, reclamation, and remediation facilities in the fields of engineering, operations, maintenance, design, estimating, construction, startup and shakedown, and claims resolution.

Contents are presented in three parts. Part one addresses the identification, selection, production, and assembly of the many elements required to produce bid packages, qualify and select bidders, and award construction contracts. Part two reviews the requirements for a reasonable, fair, practical, logical, and orderly contract administration system based on the sample bid package included in appendix B. Part three presents four case studies of construction project contracts that have difficulties; hopefully readers may use them to recognize and correct potential problem areas in their own contracts before they become claims. Some of the latest advances in information technology that can be used for construction contract management applications are also identified and discussed in part three.

Appendix A, Checklist for Processing from Start to Start-up, by Lester F. Engle, and first published in Mining Engineering magazine in May of 1966, presents an excellent checklist of items that must be considered or accomplished when preparing, writing, and awarding, contracts right through the construction, acceptance, and start-up phases.

Charles S. Phillips, P.E.

If you are looking for a good book on environmental, geotechnical or hydrogeology drilling this is the BOOK it is set up so even a driller can understand basic concepts and gives engineers a good idea about drilling practices and concepts.

Im a driller in Mexico, I have found this book very useful, it covers a lot of topics, It is very well explained and very detailed in any subject, from measures to drilling techniques as well as machinery and tools and geology for drillers.

The only poor topic I found on the book, is about pneumatic/hammer drilling altough the topic is covered it is very poor in information about the technique.

How ever in general its a very good and complete book as I said, and its a must in every driller bookshelf

This book details the history of Australian Mining, but don't be put off by the seemingly dry subject-it is anything but dry. Stories are told of the romantic gold rushes, the lucky, the unlucky, the schemes, plots, the deceptions, the clouded histories, the despair of the many, and the fortune of the few. For students of both human nature and history it has interesting insights, such as how plain luck plays a significant part in human events, and how apparently small innocuous irrelevancies can lead to profound outcomes.

An interesting example is that of the Mount Morgan Mine in Queensland. Black boulders, which cattle shied from, formed a low hill in the ranges. There was a gold rush a few miles away, but nobody thought to test the black hill, as the rocks were all wrong. Farmers sold the useless land the cattle didn't like. A lazy miner was sacked from his job, his wife pleaded for his re-employment, in return for the locale of a "silver mine" in the hills. A few savvy mine managers wandered into a black innocuous hill. They chipped away, took out leases over the whole hill (a wise move), kept it very quiet (another wise move). When samples were broken, there was more gold than black earth-it was assumed it wasn't gold but something else. They began to mine quietly away until a local newspaper noticed there was a phenomenal amount of gold leaving a nearby town. The word was out. Mount Morgan -the "freak lode" as described by geologists at the time-became one of the richest and mightiest gold mines on earth. It defied virtually everything known about gold mines at the time. Geologists were perplexed, but as long as shares repaid 413,000% of their value, the owners didn't care. The copper that got "in the way" of gold processing eventually amounted to about 250,000t of copper. It was mined for around 100 years, and money that came from the mine was used to find oil in the Middle East, which eventually formed the company BP. Mine owners declared in World War 1, that Mount Morgan money was used to fight the Germans. In the 1950s over half of Great Britain's revenue came from oil discoveries that were originally financed by one small black hill in the outback of Australia.

The world's largest resource of lead and zinc-the Broken Hill Lode-is another case in point. For some years in the 1800s a large, jagged hill of black boulders more than a mile long and 500 feet wide was ignored by local prospectors at the nearby silver rushes at Silverton. A surveyor's fence was put across it. A trig station crowned the summit. Samples were chipped which came back high in uninteresting lead, but little else. It wasn't near any main thoroughfares. The owner of the land wasn't interested in prospectors. It was too big to be a lode. A good lode was said to be five feet wide, Broken Hill was over 500 feet wide. The rocks were wrong. So numerous hopefuls mined the molehills, whilst the mountain was ignored.

When people finally got around to examining it, a few speculators bought and sold shares, making a few bucks, as the hill guarded its riches. Finally, when a shaft was sunk on the wrong rock type-white kaolin-bonanza silver assays came back and the hill was born. The first 48 tons produced about 36,000oz of silver, which in the 1880s, was a lot of dough. The ensuing stock market mania and mining development transformed Australian history. Over $AUS 70 billion has been taken from the hill to the 1990s.

There are many other similar tales, twists and turns- the vagaries and tides of history. Curiously and well written, it is recommended for those interested in history, particularly Australian, or those simply interested in curious human anecdotes of life.

This book details the history of Australian Mining, but don't be put off by the seemingly dry subject-it is anything but dry. Stories are told of the romantic gold rushes, the lucky, the unlucky, the schemes, plots, the deceptions, the clouded histories, the despair of the many, and the fortune of the few. For students of both human nature and history it has interesting insights, such as how plain luck plays a significant part in human events, and how apparently small innocuous irrelevancies can lead to profound outcomes.