100 Best Mining Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best mining books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Featuring recommendations from Barack Obama, Adam Savage, Bill Gates, and 22 other experts.
1

Angle of Repose

Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of personal, historical, and geographic discovery
 
Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an all American family.
 
"Cause for celebration . . . A superb novel with an amplitude of scale and richness of...
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Recommended by Bill Nye, Jonathan Evison, and 2 others.

Bill NyeIs is about human stories intertwined, just like your life and mine. (Source)

Jonathan EvisonI’m just astounded by the scope and magnitude of the novel, and the landscape described. It’s the story of an ailing professor near the end of his life. He’s in a wheelchair and he’s becoming a bitter man. He’s writing his family history, and he goes back generations to the movement west. Meanwhile there is this fore-story going on, which is this great generational battle between himself, an... (Source)

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2

The Giver of Stars

Set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond, from the author of Me Before You and The Peacock Emporium.

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice...

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Recommended by Reese Witherspoon, and 1 others.

Reese WitherspoonI can’t think of a better book to read during the month of giving than #TheGiverofStars by @JojoMoyes.📚 Her characters are so compelling and y’all already know how much I love historical fiction! Follow along at @reesesbookclub and let’s read together! 🌟 https://t.co/gkymgzyXE2 (Source)

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3

The Road to Wigan Pier

A searing account of George Orwell’s experiences of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, slum housing, mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. less
Recommended by David Heinemeier Hansson, D J Taylor, and 2 others.

David Heinemeier HanssonIt’s amazing how much of the abusive ideology revealed in his account of the miners is still present in today’s gig economy. (Source)

D J TaylorThe Road to Wigan Pier is a very transitional book. It shows all the attention to detail and the thought of street-level reportage that distinguishes Down and Out in Paris and London, but it’s moving forward to a political position—the political position—that will underlie what Orwell starts writing in the 1940s, for which we now celebrate him. (Source)

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4
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST


When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. The entire world watched what transpired above-ground during the grueling and protracted rescue, but the saga of the miners' experiences below the Earth's surface--and the lives that led them there--has never been heard until now.

For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the...
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5
This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.
It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S....
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Recommended by Tudor Mihailescu, and 1 others.

Tudor MihailescuIt’s vacation time so I got brave enough to start a sizeable trilogy by Ken Follett, The Century (Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, Edge of Eternity). The only expectation I had was to enjoy a good story, take my mind off into a different space. And it delivers, it’s a nice blend of history and fiction, an absorbing story throughout 20th century. (Source)

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6
WARNING! To avoid buying counterfeit on Amazon, click on "See All Buying Options" and choose "Amazon.com" and not a third-party seller.

Concise and to the point — the book can be read during a week. During that week, you will learn almost everything modern machine learning has to offer. The author and other practitioners have spent years learning these concepts.

Companion wiki — the book has a continuously updated wiki that extends some book chapters with additional information: Q&A, code snippets, further reading, tools, and other relevant resources.
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Recommended by Kirk Borne, and 1 others.

Kirk BorneRecent top-selling books in #AI & #MachineLearning: https://t.co/Ij9I7SzR4d ————— #BigData #DataScience #DataMining #Algorithms #PredictiveAnalytics #Python ————— ...in the TOP 10: 1)The Hundred-Page ML Book: https://t.co/dQ7nP6gwP0 2)Hands-on ML with...: https://t.co/Y0Iz3GbtGP https://t.co/72rAFN1FwW (Source)

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7

Artemis

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for...
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Max LevchinA very fun read that I would classify as part of the guilty pleasure section of my personal library. (Source)

Tom TerryGoing to be so cool when we return soon! Although fiction, a great book to read about what life might be like in the future on the moon is #Artemis by Andy Weir of #TheMartian. https://t.co/M1dEf8uIbT (Source)

Cat Williams-TreloarI loved the Hugh Howey "Silo" trilogy. An epic science fiction story about the above ground world coming to an end and the remaining society living underground in Wool Silos. Makes me shiver thinking about what could happen in the future. It's an intense set. More recently, "Artemis" by Andy Weir will give you the same feeling but in Space. (Source)

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8
The ultimate A-to-Z guide revealing everything you need to know to become a metal detecting expert

Who wouldn’t get a thrill from discovering buried treasure? Now with this in-depth guide, you can learn the secrets to finding valuable items like coins, jewelry and historical relics with a metal detector. With tips on choosing the ideal detector, step-by-step instructions on finding spots most likely to have treasure, and insider techniques on cleaning and improving items to maximize resale value, you learn everything needed to enjoy this fun and financially rewarding hobby....
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9

How Green Was My Valley

A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics

Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons - at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate...
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10
"I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."


Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day...
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Don't have time to read the top Mining books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11
Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief is about love, loss, grief, and the journey toward hope and reclaiming joy. Rock On focuses solely on sibling loss because it's a tragedy author Susan Casey experienced in her own life. On Valentine's Day, 2014, she learned of the horrific and unexpected death of her forty-three-year-old brother Rocky (birth name: Brian) who died while in Hong Kong with his wife and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

Susan shares her journey, capturing the bond between her and her brother, the shock over his sudden death, and the emotional...
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12
Travel guide book inspired by the gold prospecting origin of Colorado. Includes touring information on all the major towns founded as gold mining camps as well as summaries of each town's origin story. Includes reviews and recommendations on historic districts to visit, mines to tour, driving tours of ghost towns and places to gold pan. Includes information on 16 historic districts, 31 museums, 18 mines, 186 gold panning sites across the state of Colorado. Thoroughly researched to confirm public access to the panning sites (no private property or areas subject to mining claim has been... more

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13

SME Mining Reference Handbook

Need to recall properties of a rock or mineral on the fly? Or quickly convert to metric units in the field? When you're on a job site, you need answers fast. But answers don't always come easily, especially if your library of reference materials is back in the office.

Engineers are often called on to answer technical questions and solve problems while in the field. It's not always feasible to bring along the bulky reference materials needed to research engineering-related topics.

Now there's a simple solution. The SME Mining Reference Handbook is a practical...
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14

The Women of the Copper Country


In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She’s spent her whole life in the copper-mining town of Calumet, Michigan where men risk their lives for meager salaries—and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite, and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day, dreading the fateful call of the company man telling them their loved ones aren’t coming home. When Annie decides to stand up for herself, and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone...
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15

The Call of the Wild & White Fang

"The Call of the Wild tells the story of Buck, a domestic dog who is kidnapped from his home in California and forced to pull sleds in the Arctic wasteland. White Fang, by contrast, is the tale of a crossbreed who is three-quarters wolf and a quarter dog, and who must endure considerable suffering in the wilderness before being tamed by an American and taken to live in California.

Extraordinary both for the vividness of their descriptions and the success with which they imagine life from a non-human perspective, Jack London's classics of children’s literature are two...
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Recommended by José Castelló, and 1 others.

José CastellóLondon’s prose is passionate and evocative; it transports the reader to the brutal, beautiful wilds of Yukon and the lives and minds of the wolves, dogs, and men. (Source)

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16

Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

"Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my home town was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine."

So...
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17

Gray Mountain

John Grisham has a new hero . . . and she’s full of surprises

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the “lucky” associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.

In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200,...
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19

Town Is by the Sea

A young boy wakes up to the sound of the sea, visits his grandfather’s grave after lunch and comes home to a simple family dinner with his family, but all the while his mind strays to his father digging for coal deep down under the sea. Stunning illustrations by Sydney Smith, the award-winning illustrator of Sidewalk Flowers, show the striking contrast between a sparkling seaside day and the darkness underground where the miners dig.

With curriculum connections to communities and the history of mining, this beautifully understated and haunting story brings a piece of...
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20

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The New York Times and USA Today bestseller!

In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry. The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the...
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Don't have time to read the top Mining books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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21

Demelza (Poldark, #2)

Book 2 of the beloved Poldark novels • A forthcoming major new series on Masterpiece™ on PBS®

In the enchanting second novel in Winston Graham’s beloved Poldark series, Demelza Carne, an impoverished miner’s daughter Ross Poldark rescued from a fairground brawl, now happily finds herself his wife. But the events of these turbulent years test their marriage and their love. As Ross launches into a bitter struggle for the right of the mining communities, Demelza’s efforts to adapt to the ways of the gentry (and her husband) place her in increasingly odd and...

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22

Ross Poldark (Poldark #1)

In the first novel in Winston Graham’s hit series, a weary Ross Poldark returns to England from the American War of Independence (1783), looking forward to a joyful homecoming with his beloved Elizabeth. But instead he discovers his father has died, his home is overrun by livestock and drunken servants, and Elizabeth—believing Ross to be dead—is now engaged to his cousin. Ross has no choice but to start his life anew.

Thus begins the Poldark series, a heartwarming, gripping saga set in the windswept landscape of Cornwall. With an unforgettable cast of characters that spans loves,...
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23

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.

Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee,...

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24

Jeremy Poldark (Poldark, #3)

Book 3 of the beloved Poldark novels, now the subject of a forthcoming major new series on Masterpiece™ on PBS®

Ross Poldark faces the darkest hour of his life in this third novel of the Poldark series. Reeling from the tragic death of a loved one, Captain Poldark vents his grief by inciting impoverished locals to salvage the contents of a ship run aground in a storm—an act for which British law proscribes death by hanging. Ross is brought to trial for his involvement, and despite their stormy marriage, Demelza tries to rally support for her husband, to save him...

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25

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June

When push comes to shove, two Kentucky girls find strength in each other.

Ivy June Mosely and Catherine Combs, two girls from different parts of Kentucky, are participating in the first seventh-grade student exchange program between their schools. The girls will stay at each other’s homes, attend school together, and record their experience in their journals. Catherine and her family have a beautiful home with plenty of space. Since Ivy June’s house is crowded, she lives with her grandparents. Her Pappaw works in the coal mines supporting four generations of kinfolk. Ivy...
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26
Getting numbers is easy; getting numbers you can trust is hard. This practical guide by experimentation leaders at Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft will teach you how to accelerate innovation using trustworthy online controlled experiments, or A/B tests. Based on practical experiences at companies that each run more than 20,000 controlled experiments a year, the authors share examples, pitfalls, and advice for students and industry professionals getting started with experiments, plus deeper dives into advanced topics for practitioners who want to improve the way they make data-driven... more

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27

Prayers for Sale

Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just seventeen and newly married. She and her husband have just moved to the high country in search of work. It's 1936 and the depression has ravaged the country and Nit and her husband have suffered greatly. Hennie notices the young woman loitering near the old sign outside of her house that promises "Prayers For Sale". Hennie doesn't sell prayers, never has, but there's something about the young woman that she's drawn to. The harsh conditions of life that each... more

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28
Erma's Attic is a heartfelt and humorous tale, filled with historical facts, folksy phrases and amusing adages of the Southern United States. When Annie, a young doctoral student living in Charleston, West Virginia, takes the advice of an elderly friend to spend a few nights at a farmhouse up Black Hollow Road, she discovers a journal in the attic. The aged journal, she soon discovers, was written by her dear friend Erma who had recently passed on over to the sweet by and by. Her friend's memories transports her on an adventure that embraces involvement in the women's suffrage movement,... more

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29
Enthusiastic, thorough, and everything you need to know about discovering buried treasure!

There is an incredible amount of treasure buried right under our feet, but most people don’t even know this huge amount of untold wealth exists. Imagine how it must feel to uncover large caches of silver and gold coins or long-lost jewelry packed with shimmering, precious stones. These are not some made-up fairy tales—there are people who, at this very moment, are finding these treasures.

Veteran metal detector and treasure hunter Mark Smith takes you under his wing and...
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30
Join the technological revolution that's taking the world of finance by storm. Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the knowledge you need to participate in the internet of money. Whether you're building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this revised and expanded second edition provides essential detail to get you started.

Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its early stages and yet it's already spawned a multi-billion dollar global...
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Recommended by Hong Qi Yu, Auston Bunsen, and 2 others.

Hong Qi Yu“Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies Technologies” and “Mastering Bitcoin” provide a comprehensive yet not too intimidating introduction to the revolutionary yet often misunderstood concept of digital currency. (Source)

Auston BunsenThis [reading something helpful] happens with pretty much every book I read. Most recently it happened to me when I was reading “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonoupolous. I had no idea what the components of a Bitcoin wallet address were and he elegantly explains them in detail in chapter 4. It’s particularly relevant because we started CBlocks and we focus almost exclusively on wallet... (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Mining books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
31
“A monumentally researched biography of one of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest self-made Americans…Well-written and worthwhile” (The Wall Street Journal) it’s the rags-to-riches frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevada’s Comstock Lode.

Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra...
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32
Neural networks are getting smaller. Much smaller. The OK Google team, for example, has run machine learning models that are just 14 kilobytes in size--small enough to work on the digital signal processor in an Android phone. With this practical book, you'll learn about TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, a miniscule machine learning library that allows you to run machine learning algorithms on tiny hardware.

Authors Pete Warden and Daniel Situnayake explain how you can train models that are small enough to fit into any environment, including small embedded devices that can run...
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34
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Revenant -- basis for the award-winning motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio -- tells the remarkable story of the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history.

A half-hour before midnight on June 8, 1917, a fire broke out in the North Butte Mining Company's Granite Mountain shaft. Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a...
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37

Tomboy Bride

A Woman's Personal Account of Life in Mining Camps of the West

A true pioneer of the West, Harriet Backus writes about her amusing and often challenging experiences with heart-felt emotion and vivid detail. New foreword by Pam Houston and afterword by author's grandson Rob Walton are featured.

It is a woman named Hattie's personal account of life in the mining camps of the American West, beginning with her marriage to George and concluding in 1964 when George died, literally in her arms. Tomboy Bride is divided into four parts: The San Juans; Britannia Beach; The Heart of Idaho; and Leadville, City in the Clouds. Tomboy Bride is an engaging...
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39

Where Courage Calls (Return to the Canadian West #1)

Her courage and her heart will be tested in ways she never expected...

Beth Thatcher has spent her entire life in the safe, comfortable world of her family, her friends, and the social outings her father's wealth provides. But Beth is about to leave it all behind to accept a teaching position in the rugged foothills of western Canada. Inspired by her aunt Elizabeth, who went west to teach school several years ago, and gently encouraged by her father, Beth resolves to put her trust in God and bravely face any challenge that comes her way.

But the conditions in...
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40
Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.

Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting...
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Don't have time to read the top Mining books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
42
This book is the first volume in the Dave W. Parkhurst Mining Writing Collection, which is a compilation of articles by the author that were originally published in the former California Mining Journal (now the ICMJ) in the 1980s and early 1990s. Volume 1 consists of articles that relate primarily to the formation, concentration, characteristics and types of deposits of valuable metals and minerals-especially gold, historically the most sought-after of the precious metals. GOLD PLACERS AND MINERAL DEPOSITS encompasses four topics: (1) how, where and why mineral deposits form; (2) the... more

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43

Little Audrey

"What else would you wish for?" Daddy says. "If you could have anything in the world, what would you wish for?"
I shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe . . ."
"Maybe what?"
"For us to live better than we do."
He does not say anything.

In 1948, award-winning author Ruth White lived in Jewell Valley, a coal camp nestled between the hills of southwestern Virginia, with her mother, still mourning for a baby who died four years earlier; her father, who spent the weekends and most of his pay out drinking; and her three older sisters,...
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44

Earthcore

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ...and guarding. Kirkland and... more

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45

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

After seeing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, fourteen-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer will affect the entire town of Medgar, Kentucky.

Medgar is beset by a massive mountaintop removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather...
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46

By the Great Horn Spoon!

For fans of the I Survived series, this classic rollicking adventure about the California Gold Rush and one determined twelve-year-old has sold nearly a million copies!
When Jack's aunt is forced to sell her beloved mansion but is still unable to raise enough money to pay her debts, the twelve-year-old goes to California in search of gold to help her. Joined by his trusty butler, Praiseworthy, Jack finds adventure and trouble at every turn. Will Jack strike gold in San Francisco or come home empty-handed?
This new edition features illustrations by Brett Helquist.
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47
Coming down from the mountain to a new life in the city is a thrill to Miri. She and her princess academy friends have been brought to Asland to help the future princess Britta prepare for her wedding.There, Miri also has a chance to attend school-at the Queen's Castle. But as Miri befriends students who seem sophisticated and exciting she also learns that they have some frightening plans. Torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends' ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city, Miri looks to find her own way in this new... more

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48
When Chantel Panetta's younger sister claims to be in love with Orlando Calarco, Chantel knows there is no hope. The Panettas and Calarcos have been sworn enemies for decades, and young love cannot heal the deep wounds between the two iron-mining families. Yet, unable to resist Isabella's pleas, Chantel agrees to help her sister spend time with Orlando...only to have a run-in with Dante, Orlando's brother. The older, more handsome one.

Chantel can't deny the attraction that flares when she's with Dante. But when a tragedy occurs at the mine, is there any hope that the hatred that...
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49
'Robots will steal your job!'

'AI will revolutionise farming!'

'Genetic editing will cure cancer!'

Bombastic headlines about science and technology are nothing new. To cut through the constant stream of information and misinformation on social media, or grab the attention of investors, or convince governments to take notice, strident headlines or bold claims seem necessary to give complex, nuanced information some wow factor.

But hype has a dark side, too.

It can mislead. It can distract. It can blinker us from seeing what is actually...
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50
An accessible primer on how to create effective graphics from data

This book provides students and researchers a hands-on introduction to the principles and practice of data visualization. It explains what makes some graphs succeed while others fail, how to make high-quality figures from data using powerful and reproducible methods, and how to think about data visualization in an honest and effective way.

Data Visualization builds the reader's expertise in ggplot2, a versatile visualization library for the R programming language. Through a series of worked...
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Don't have time to read the top Mining books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
51
There is an entire world of buried treasure right under our feet. This book shows you how to claim your share. Over 200 pages of valuable metal detecting information designed to get you out there finding treasure on your very first outing.

Finding treasure with a metal detector is real and doing it is simple and easy once you read this book. There are people finding incredible old coins made from gold and silver, valuable historical relics and old jewelry made from gold, silver and platinum. But you won't find these great treasures unless you know where and how to look. Metal...
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52

Salt

A World History

From the Bestselling Author of Cod and The Basque History of the World

In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.  Populated by colorful...
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53

Dragon's Kin (Pern, #17)

Beginning with the classic Dragonriders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey has created a complex, endlessly fascinating world uniting humans and great telepathic dragons. Millions of devoted readers have soared on the glittering wings of Anne’s imagination, following book by book the evolution of one of science fiction’s most beloved and honored series. Now, for the first time, Anne has invited another writer to join her in the skies of Pern, a writer with an intimate knowledge of Pern and its history: her son, Todd.

DRAGON’S KIN

Young Kindan has no expectations other...
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54

Work Song

An award-winning and beloved novelist of the American West spins the further adventures of a favorite character, in one of his richest historical settings yet.

"If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point," observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one-room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in Ivan Doig's 2006 The Whistling Season. A decade later, Morrie is back in Montana, as the beguiling narrator of Work Song.

Lured like so many others by "the...
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55
Hero! Pilot! Avenger! Captain Marvel, Earth's Mightiest Hero with an attitude to match, is back and launching headfirst into an all-new ongoing adventure! As Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Carol Danvers, comes to a crossroads with a new life and new romance, she makes a dramatic decision that will alter the course of her life - and the entire Marvel Universe - in the months to come. But as Carol takes on a mission to return an alien girl to her homeworld, she lands in the middle of an uprising against the Galactic Alliance! Investigating the forced resettlement of Rocket Girl's people, Carol... more

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56

Daughter of Fortune

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

As we follow her spirited heroine on a...
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57

River with No Bridge

In 1882, eighteen-year-old Nora Flanagan works in Boston as a maid and dreams of better things. Then she meets Tade Larkin, who tells of better things in the Montana Territory, where he works as a miner. Nora makes the long journey across the country to marry Tade, but life is harsh in the West, and Nora faces challenges she never imagined. Through it all she is sustained by the affection of an unlikely protector and her growing love for the wild untamed landscape of the West. less

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58

Bodie's Gold

"The Bodie Mining District was established in 1860 after the discovery of gold deposits in the area. The boom ended just twenty years later, and the town began its long, slow decline, surviving into the twentieth century as a village supported by a few small but steady mines. Mining ended with World War II, and what remained of the town became a state park in 1964." In Bodie's Gold, author Marguerite Sprague uses a wide range of original sources to recount Bodie's colorful history: its mines and miners; demimonde of saloons and brothels; schools, churches, and other institutions of settled... more

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60

King Solomon's Mines (Allan Quatermain, #1)

H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines has entertained generations of readers since its first publication in 1885. Following a mysterious map of dubious reliability, a small group of men trek into southern Africa in search of a lost friend-and a lost treasure, the fabled mines of King Solomon. Led by the English adventurer and fortune hunter Allan Quartermain, they discover a frozen corpse, survive untold dangers in remote mountains and deserts, and encounter the merciless King Twala en route to the legendary hoard of diamonds. less

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61
WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD
Atop a craggy mesa in the northern reaches of the Navajo reservation lies what was once a world-class uranium mine called Monument No. 2. Discovered in the 1940s—during the government’s desperate press to build nuclear weapons—the mesa’s tremendous lode would forever change the lives of the hundreds of Native Americans who labored there and of their families, including many who dwelled in the valley below for generations afterward.

Yellow Dirt offers readers a window into a dark chapter of modern history that still...

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62
Son of a rogue and a gypsy, Nicholas Davies was a notorious rake until a shattering betrayal left him alone and embittered in the Welsh countryside. Desperation drives quiet schoolteacher Clare Morgan to ask the Demon Earl to help save her village. Unwilling to involve himself in the problems of others, Nicholas agrees --- only if Clare will live with him for three months. less

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64

Penmarric

Set against the starkly beautiful landscape of Cornwall, PENMARRIC is the totally enthralling saga of a family divided against itself. At the center of the novel is the great mansion called Penmarric. It is to Penmarric that Mark Castallack, a proud, strange, and sensitive man, brings his bride Janna--the first act in a tempestuous drama that was to span three generations.... less

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65
A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it-a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict. In this powerful call to arms, Erik Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction. less

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66

Finding Treasure

A Field Guide

W.C. Jameson shows you where to look and how to find valuable artifacts, precious metals, lost jewels, and hidden caches in a neighborhood park, your attic, at the beach or in open country. Practical tips will get you started, help you protect your claim on any found treasure and authenticate the value of coins, jewels and other objects. less

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69

Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico

In places like the valley town of Alma, once known to Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, and through the dusty streets of San Antonio, where Conrad Hilton began his fabulous career by carrying luggage from the train station to his father’s hotel, the Shermans have explored the past and present of New Mexico’s famous and infamous ghost towns and mining camps.


They have arranged for the reader a historical and pictorial journey through more than 130 of the state’s old and defunct mining, farming, railroad, and lumbering communities. A cross section of New Mexico’s legacy from...
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70

One Man's West

"The country in which I grew up-the rugged areas of southwestern Colorado-was changing rapidly in the 1930s. I sensed that something unique in the nation's experience was ending, and I tried to capture a segment of the passing on paper-the breakup of the great cattle ranches and mines and the last efforts of the old-timers to hang on in the face of declining profits and increasing mechanization they themselves could not afford."-David Lavender less

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71
Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family— a couple and their four children— living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to slag and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters.

Strange As This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on...
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72
In the coal-mining region of Central Appalachia, mountaintop-removal mining and coal-industry-related flooding, water contamination, and illness have led to the emergence of a grassroots, women-driven environmental justice movement. But the number of local activists is small relative to the affected population, and recruiting movement participants from within the region is an ongoing challenge.

In "Fighting King Coal," Shannon Elizabeth Bell examines an understudied puzzle within social movement theory: why so few of the many people who suffer from industry-produced environmental...
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73
In this popular text that has trained thousands in the petroleum industry for years, Dr. Norman Hyne takes readers through upstream operations--from how oil and gas are formed; how to find commercial quantities; how to drill, evaluate, and complete a well--all the way through production and improved oil recovery. He uses lots of pictures, graphs, and illustrations to aid readers in understanding topics and to provide necessary visuals.

Read it cover-to-cover as a complete primer, read it a section at a time as it comes up in your profession, and keep it handy as a quick...
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74
A fine selection of historical descriptions of the town and parish of Camborne spanning the years 1700 to 1898, including accounts of the parish by Edward Lhuyd, William Penaluna and Joseph Polsue. Also includes Richard Trevithick by Richard Edmonds, the elusive Reminiscences of Camborne by William Richards Tuck (which includes a first hand account of Joseph Emidy, the 18th century West African born slave turned composer and virtuoso violinist), Rodolph Eric Raspe, the author of the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, by Robert Hunt, The Endowed Public Charities of Camborne by Thomas Fiddick... more

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75
Corporations are among the most powerful institutions of our time, but they are also responsible for a wide range of harmful social and environmental impacts. Consequently, political movements and nongovernmental organizations increasingly contest the risks that corporations pose to people and nature. Mining Capitalism examines the strategies through which corporations manage their relationships with these critics and adversaries. By focusing on the conflict over the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea, Stuart Kirsch tells the story of a slow-moving environmental disaster... more

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76
The emergence of China as a major economic power in the first decade of the millennium prompted the biggest commodity boom of modern times. Soaring prices gave rise to talk of a commodity 'super cycle' and induced a wave of resource nationalism in mineral-rich countries. It also stirred up concerns of supply shortages in mineral-consuming countries. The author, who served as chief economist at two of the world's largest mining companies during these years, describes how and why this resulted in a transformation – a 'remaking' – of the mining industry. The book tells of how the markets in... more

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77
Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced first upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds, and then upon its richest deposits of gold. What followed was a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land, culminating in the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and in the devastation of the Boer republics. Martin Meredith's magisterial account of... more

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78
The fire was visible 70 miles away as a distant flame on the horizon. The heat was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the flames extended high above the rotor blades. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be seen bobbing as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat. At the center stood the Piper Alpha oil platform, once the world's single largest oil producer. On July 6, 1988, its final day, it was ablaze with 226 men on board. Only 61 would survive. Adapted as an award-winning... more

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79

The Lucky Hat Mine

A recipe for true love or murder? Ingredients: one Southern belle, one Colorado gold miner, a wife wanted classified, and a fainting goat. Let simmer.

What's a Southern belle to do in 1863? Wife-wanted ads are always risky business, but Millie Virginia never imagined she'd survive the perilous trip across the Great Plains to find her intended husband in a pine box. Was he killed in an accident? Or murdered for his gold mine? Stuck in the mining town of Idaho Springs, Colorado territory, without friends or means, Millie is beleaguered by undesirable suitors and...
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81

Roughing It

Though known throughout the world for his fictional novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain was also a skilled chronicler of his own life and experiences. In his youth, Twain traveled extensively throughout the untamed American West with his brother, working his way from town to town in a variety of jobs, including gold prospector, reporter, and lecturer. Roughing It is Twain's personal recollection of his wanderlust years. It is a wildly humorous adventure yarn that combines hard facts with a healthy dose of the author's unique... more

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82

The Colour

Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from England to New Zealand, along with Joseph's mother Lilian, in search of new beginnings and prosperity, but the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in a creek bed, he hides the discovery from both his wife and mother and becomes obsessed with the riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new goldfields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of the... more

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83

The Diary of a Forty-Niner

1849, California.

The Gold Rush had begun.


300,000 gold-seekers left their homes, grabbed what they could and headed West to find their fortune.

This is the diary of one of those intrepid men, and the trials and tribulations that he faces in his search for riches.

From May 1850 through to June 1852 the life of Alfred T. Jackson, one of the forty-niners, was compiled by Chauncey Canfield.

Jackson’s dream was that “I would like to have enough capital so that I would not have to slave from sunrise till dark as I did on dad's farm.”...
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84
'33 Men Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners' is the riveting and authoritative account of the 2010 San Joseacute mine rescue in Chile - after one of the longest human entrapments in history.

With his coveted "Rescue Pass," Franklin was permitted access far past the police perimeter. It would be seventeen long days before the miners were discovered alive and the world press descended. It would be another fifty-two days before the miners were all successfully rescued.

For eight weeks, Franklin conducted interviews with families,...
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85

Whiter Than Snow

Whiter Than Snow opens in 1920, on a spring afternoon in Swandyke, a small town near Colorado’s Tenmile Range. Just moments after four o’clock, a large split of snow separates from Jubilee Mountain high above the tiny hamlet and hurtles down the rocky slope, enveloping everything in its path including nine young children who are walking home from school. But only four children survive. Whiter Than Snow takes you into the lives of each of these families: There’s Lucy and Dolly Patch—two sisters, long estranged by a shocking betrayal. Joe Cobb, Swandyke’s only black resident, whose love... more

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87

Saving Lucas Biggs

When thirteen-year-old Margaret's father is unfairly sentenced to death by the cruel Judge Biggs, she is determined to save him, even if it means using her family's secret-and forbidden-ability to time travel. With the help of her best friend, Charlie, and his grandpa Josh, Margaret goes back to a time when Judge Biggs was a young boy and tries to prevent the chain of events that transformed him into a corrupt, jaded man. less

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88
Roslyn, a mining town nestled in Washington's Cascade Mountains, is a little town with a big history. Founded three years before Washington was admitted to the Union, Roslyn became a boomtown after the discovery of coal. Coal was king in Roslyn for 80 years, and immigrants came from all over the world to work the mines. Roslyn's remarkable history includes stories of murder, a mine strike that ended with the mine boss tied to the railroad tracks, and a bank robbery some claim was masterminded by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Readers will meet characters like Tony Bailey--he turned out... more

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90

Kal

Kalgoorlie. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world's richest vein of gold. Like the gold it guarded, Kalgoorlie was a magnet to anyone with a sense of adventure, anyone who could dream. People were drawn there from all over the world, settling to start afresh or to seek their fortunes. They called it Kal; it was a place where dreams came true or were lost forever in the dust. It could reward you or it could destroy you, but it would never let you go. You staked you claim in Kal and Kal staked its claim in you. In a story as breathtaking and as sweeping as the land itself,... more

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91
One evening in late October 1958, the deepest coal mine in North America "bumped"-its rock floors heaved up and smashed into rock ceilings. Most of the men on the shift perished. But nineteen men were trapped alive a mile below the earth's surface, struggling to survive without food, water, light, or fresh air. Almost a week passed without rescue. Hopes of finding life dwindled; then a miracle happened: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe that led to the cave of survivors. In the media circus that followed, the survivors' endurance was mythologized and twisted, and the state of Georgia's... more

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92
“No novel could contain more dramatic events than the history of Cripple Creek.”—Wyoming Library Roundup

“This is the fascinating story of the great Cripple Creek gold mines. But it is not told with fantasy: here are the plain facts of one of the most unbelievable incidents of our history, of a place in the Colorado mountains where a man threw his hat into the air, dug where it fell, and struck a rich vein of ore. . . . It is a fascinating story and the author has told it well.”—Paul Engle, Chicago Tribune

“Money Mountain mines as rich a vein of human...
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93
The book is a major revision of the first edition that appeared in 1999. While the basic core remains the same, it has been updated to reflect the changes that have taken place over five years, and now has nearly double the references. The highlights for the new edition include thirty new technique sections; an enhanced Weka machine learning workbench, which now features an interactive interface; comprehensive information on neural networks; a new section on Bayesian networks; plus much more. less

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94
High atop the Continental Divide, the Climax Mine opened during World War I to meet military needs for molybdenum and became the most successful American company of the Great Depression. Voynick's deft portrayal of Climax and its people, with over 100 rare photographs, make this an invaluable addition to western mining lore. less

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95
In Hollowed Ground, author Larry Lankton tells the story of two copper industries on Lake Superior-native copper mining, which produced about 11 billion pounds of the metal from the 1840s until the late 1960s, and copper sulfide mining, which began in the 1950s and produced another 4.4 billion pounds of copper through the 1990s. In addition to documenting companies and their mines, mills, and smelters, Hollowed Ground is also a community study. It examines the region's population and ethnic mix, which was a direct result of the mining industry, and the companies' paternalistic involvement in... more

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96

Coal

A Human History

In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins hundreds of millions of years ago and spans the globe. Prized as “the best stone in Britain” by Roman invaders who carved jewelry out of it, coal has transformed societies, expanded frontiers, and sparked social movements, and still powers our electric grid. Yet coal’s world-changing power has come at a tremendous price, including centuries of blackening our skies and lungs—and now the dangerous warming of our global climate. Ranging from the “great stinking fogs” of London to the rat-infested coal mines... more

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98
This is the first comprehensive history of aerial mine tramways in the American West, describing their place in the evolution of mining after 1870. Robert A Trennert shows how the mid-nineteenth century development of wire rope manufacturing made it possible for American entrepreneurs such as Andrew S Hallidie and Charles Huson to begin erecting single-rope tramways in the 1870s and 1880s. Their inventions were followed by the more substantial double-rope systems imported from Europe. By the turn of the century, aerial tramways were common throughout western mining regions, hauling everything... more

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99

Baker Towers

Bakerton is a community of company houses and church festivals, of union squabbles and firemen's parades. Its neighborhoods include Little Italy, Swedetown, and Polish Hill. For its tight-knit citizens -- and the five children of the Novak family -- the 1940s will be a decade of excitement, tragedy, and stunning change. Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone, to America's industrial past, and to the men and women we now call the Greatest Generation. It is a feat of imagination from an extraordinary voice in American fiction, a writer of... more

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