Read The City That Ate Itself Butte Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit Mining and Society Series Book 1 eBook Brian James Leech

Product details File Size 6928 KB Print Length 425 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN 1943859426 Publisher University of Nevada Press; 1 edition (February 28, 2018) Publication Date February 28, 2018 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B079CH17HH

The City That Ate Itself Butte Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit Mining and Society Series Book 1 eBook Brian James Leech Reviews

• This accessible and well-written book provides a window into Butte, Montana, which is home to the largest Superfund site in America, but is also home to a rich ethnic and labor history past. Leech examines his subject through environmental, social, technological, and labor history lenses, with the goal of unpacking the Berkeley Pit's impacts on the community from the 1950s to the 2000s. It's one of the first environmental histories I've read that actually acknowledges the power phenomenon of Superfund stigma, rather than hinting at it. It's also, as fellow Butte historian Tim LeCain notes, a rare history that focuses on Butte's post-war period, rather than another history of the mines.
  
  Leech breaks the book into chapters that address underground mining processes, a detailed examination of the myriad neighborhoods of Butte that were ethnic enclaves (and social glue), the evolution of neoliberal mining business practices and the weakening of the unions, construction of the Pit (which led to the destruction of several neighbors and the scattering of neighbors and identity) and abandonment of the underground mines, an envirotechnical examination of pit mining, and what Butte has done to reinvent itself since the shuttering of the mine when the Pit began to fill with water. Leech also tackles perceptions from within the community and without, and thoughtfully catalogues how Butte's residents, city-county government, and business community have tried to chart a path forward. This complex history also examines the topic of heritage preservation versus waste removal.
  
  Butte is a community incredibly proud of its industrial past, but it's also a community that wants to thrive in a (sort of) post-industrial future. The Berkeley Pit is not the only aspect of the Superfund site in Butte, and the mining company Montana Resources continues to dig an even bigger pit (the Continental) right next to the Berkeley, posing incredible environmental challenges to the city in the future. Butte is a city that resents being treated badly for its very visible scars, especially when the city contributed so much to the electrification of America and the WWI effort. The "Butte vs. Everybody" T-shirts popular in the city are a summation of how Butte residents ("Butte rats") feel about a state and a country that snub the city in subtle ways because of its Superfund designation. Butte doesn't fit in "Big Sky" country. It's not what people imagine when they think of Montana. But Butte's history is an integral chapter in America's history, whether Montana and the U.S. like it or not.
  
  Bottom line Leech has written a fine book, and it should be required reading in every environmental history class or mining engineering seminar. What's more, this book is no declensionist narrative of environmental degradation. Rather, it proves that the community is perfectly capable of attaining a bright future for itself, but it's going to take even more work than it took to dig that Pit in the first place.
• Nothing to dislike. Thoroughly researched, footnoted, etc. the book could easily be used at the college level especially the social and
  Economic areas.
• Coming from Butte I find this fascinating. It also lead me to buy Dashiell Hammett Continental OP and Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner.