Like so many other lads in North Staffordshire, George Shufflebotham followed his father down the pit, so he knew what to expect when he rolled up for his first day at Berry Hill Colliery. Between 1996 and 2003 he wrote a series of popular articles that were featured in the Sentinel newspaper in the series "the way we were" and "all your yesterday's". This selection of those articles recall the experiences of working underground and reflect on the many human aspects of a working life down the pit.

Identifies good practices for targeting limited financial resources to conduct integrity due diligence checks for extractive sector licensing. Principles contained will help countries to meet EITI beneficial ownership disclosure requirements to improve integrity and transparency in regulatory licensing processes in extractive sectors.

In response to the global increase in the use of biofuels as substitute transportation fuels, advanced chemical, biochemical and thermochemical biofuels production routes are fast being developed. Research and development in this field is aimed at improving the quality and environmental impact of biofuels production, as well as the overall efficiency and output of biofuels production plants. The range of biofuels has also increased to supplement bioethanol and biodiesel production, with market developments leading to the increased production and utilisation of such biofuels as biosyngas, biohydrogen and biobutanol, among others. Handbook of biofuels production provides a comprehensive and systematic reference on the range of biomass conversion processes and technology. Part one reviews the key issues in the biofuels production chain, including feedstocks, sustainability assessment and policy development. Part two reviews chemical and biochemical conversion and in turn Part three reviews thermal and thermo-chemical conversion, with both sections detailing the wide range of processes and technologies applicable to the production of first, second and third generation biofuels. Finally, Part four reviews developments in the integration of biofuels production, including biorefineries and by-product valorisation, as well as the utilisation of biofuels in diesel engines. With its distinguished international team of contributors, Handbook of biofuels production is a standard reference for biofuels production engineers, industrial chemists and biochemists, plant scientists, academics and researchers in this area.

Mining is not for the fainthearted. Yes, the rewards are enormous. But so are the risks—and consequences—of failure. Risk Management in Evaluating Mineral Deposits walks you through the many-faceted risk evaluation you need to conduct before you invest your hard-earned dollars. Written by a mining professional with a strong background in technical and financial studies, risk assessment, and statistics, this book provides a detailed suite of tools so you can determine whether investing in a mining project makes sense for you. Looking at a host of issues—the composition of the ore deposit, the management’s previous record, the quality of the information at hand, and your own risk-tolerance comfortlevel, to name a few—author Jean-Michel Rendu provides a comprehensive guide to determine when to invest with high confi dence, when to demand a plan that reduces the risks and increases the chances of a positive outcome, and when to just walk away. This book will have relevance for many years. Unlike others, Rendu factors in not just fi nancial but environmental and social aspects to evaluate the triple bottom line. He shows you why your project needs a different evaluator for each of these three legs and how to combine their evaluations to make one decision. As more and more government agencies and communities insist on these types of metrics, this focus will help keep you up-to-date in a rapidly changing world and increase the possibility that your investment will generate profi ts even in this complex, uncertain, and timeconstrained industry.

The inhabitants of Meadow Lake, California, dreamed as big as all the gold seekers of the far West, certain that their town, their mine was the "big bonanza"—a place of legendary wealth that most prospectors believed really existed somewhere. The dream took shape in 1865 when the Meadow Lake region of eastern California became the scene of one of the most feverish stampedes in the history of prospecting. Reports of gold-filled ledges five miles long brought miners, lumbermen, and speculators rushing into the area, and within a year a city of several thousand people sprang up. Their frenzied optimism was undiminished by disquieting news that the gold could not be removed from the surrounding granite. The following summer brought increasing crowds, but a profitable method of separating the gold from the rock was never discovered. Disenchanted miners began to leave, and within a few years only a lone hermit, the original inhabitant of Meadow Lake, remained in the dismal wreckage of the once-thriving town. Paul Fatout brings to life the colorful characters who figured in the history of Meadow Lake, telling the story at a sprightly pace and in fascinating detail.

The Coeur d'Alenes, a twenty-five by ten mile portion of the Idaho Panhandle, is home to one of the most productive mining districts in world history. Historically the globe's richest silver district and also one of the nation's biggest lead and zinc producers, the Coeur d'Alenes' legacy also includes environmental pollution on an epic scale. For decades local waters were fouled with tailings from the mining district's more than one hundred mines and mills and the air surrounding Kellogg, Idaho was laced with lead and other toxic heavy metals issuing from the Bunker Hill Company's smelter. The same industrial processes that damaged the environment and harmed human health, however, also provided economic sustenance to thousands of local residents and a string of proud, working-class communities. Living with Lead endeavors to untangle the costs and benefits of a century of mining, milling, and smelting in a small western city and the region that surrounds it.

Ever since people began cultivating cereal crops 10,000 years ago grain had to be ground down, or milled, into flour to make bread. Up to the Roman period in Britain this could only be done using simple hand querns but, over time, technology improved by introducing circular, horizontal millstones powered by water or wind. Other trades needed the means to crush raw materials to produce their final product: vertical grindstones were used to crush bark for use in tanning, pulp softwood timber to make paper, crush apples for cider, or pulverise gorse for animal fodder. Millstones and grindstones were roughed out in small quarries and on hillsides wherever suitable stone outcropped, and the evidence of this rural industry can be teased out by examining abandoned ‘roughouts’ that litter many upland areas and by searching for tooling marks. This book explores production sites across North West England and along the Pennine chain, where millstones and grindstones were sourced from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

When prospector “Ed” Schieffelin set out from Fort Huachuca in 1877 in search of silver, skeptics told him alL he’d find would be his own tombstone. What he did discover, of course, was one ofthe richest veins of silver in the West—a strike he wryly called Tombstone. Briefly a boomtown, in less than a decade Tombstonewas fading into what, for the next halfcentury, looked more like a ghost town. How is it, Kara McCormack asks, that the resurrection of a few of the town’s long-dead figures, caught forever in a thirty-second shoot-out, revived the moribund Tombstone— and turned it into what the Arizona Office of Tourism today calls “equal partsDeadwood and Disney”? A meditation on the marketing of “authenticity,” Imagining Tombstone considers this “most authentic western town in America” as the intersection of history and mythmaking, entertainment and education, the wish to preserve, the will to succeed, Imagining Tombstone The Town Too Tough to Die Kara L. McCormack and the need to survive. McCormack revisits the facts behind the feud that culminated in the Earp brothers’ and Doc Holliday’s long walk to their showdown with the Clantons and McLaurys—a walk reenacted by so many actors that it became a ritual of Hollywood westerns and a staple of present-day Tombstone’s tourist offerings. Taking into account decades of preservation efforts, stories told by Hollywood, performances on the town’s streets, the fervor of Earp historians and western history buffs, and global notions of the West, Imagining Tombstone shows how the town’s tenacity depends on far more than a “usable past.” If Tombstone is “The Town Too Tough to Die,” it is also, as this edifying and entertaining book makes clear, the place where authentic history and its counterpart in popular culture reveal their lasting and lucrative hold on the public imagination.

In Unearthing Conflict Fabiana Li analyzes the aggressive expansion and modernization of mining in Peru since the 1990s to tease out the dynamics of mining-based protests. Issues of water scarcity and pollution, the loss of farmland, and the degradation of sacred land are especially contentious. She traces the emergence of the conflicts by discussing the smelter-town of La Oroya-where people have lived with toxic emissions for almost a century-before focusing her analysis on the relatively new Yanacocha gold mega-mine. Debates about what kinds of knowledge count as legitimate, Li argues, lie at the core of activist and corporate mining campaigns. Li pushes against the concept of "equivalence"-or methods with which to quantify and compare things such as pollution-to explain how opposing groups interpret environmental regulations, assess a project's potential impacts, and negotiate monetary compensation for damages. This politics of equivalence is central to these mining controversies, and Li uncovers the mechanisms through which competing parties create knowledge, assign value, arrive at contrasting definitions of pollution, and construct the Peruvian mountains as spaces under constant negotiation.

"Music and Social Change in South Africa" looks at contemporary maskanda-a folk musical genre distinguished by fast guitar picking and blues-style vocal intonation-against the backdrop of South Africa's history. A performance practice that emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century among Zulu migrant workers, maskanda is strongly associated with young Zulu men's experiences of repression and dislocation during imperial and, more particularly, apartheid rule.
Working closely with translated song lyrics and musical notation-and applying musical and socio-political analysis to this music and its cultural context-Olsen argues that maskanda offers insight into how the post-apartheid ideal of social transformation is experienced by those who were marginalized for most of the twentieth century.
Drawing on a decade of research, Olsen strives to demystify the Zulu part of contemporary experience in South Africa and to reveal some of the complexities of the social, economic, and political landscape of contemporary South Africa.

So much has been said about Marikana since the tragedy of 16 August 2012 where 34 miners were shot dead by police. South Africans are divided, with many supporting the miners and others supporting the police. The news and the images of the massacre made headlines around the globe for weeks. What the world didn’t take into account was who and what it took to bring that news from the small town of Rustenburg to the world.

Reporting from the Frontline by Gia Nicolaides is about personal experiences describing incidents behind the scenes from the main action. While most journalists spent weeks covering the unfolding events at Marikana, many didn’t have the opportunity to tell their own stories. A large group of journalists, producers and television presenters gathered at the North West Platinum Mine when several deaths were reported and the violence broke out. While the nation and the world focused on what was happening on the ground, no one asked how the media dealt with this tragedy. As with any good movie, critics want to know what it took to create it.

These stories will take you to the production centre of Marikana where the journalists watched, listened and interviewed in order to weave the stories together. The way Marikana was told to the world is quite different to what happened to the journalists who covered it. Their stories will show a completely different perspective.

The lure of gold in the American West beckoned to thousands of hungry settlers eager to stake a claim, reap the abundant wealth of the territory, and escape often difficult financial conditions at home, whether in Eastern cities, Europe or China. These prospectors found that Western gold and silver veins were elusive and subject to dry up with little notice. Forced to move often in search of the next big lode, they left behind them hundreds of mining camps and settlements, many of which still exist across the Western landscape. This reference work catalogues silver and gold mining camps state-by-state in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Each entry includes location, names of miners known to have worked the site, year of discovery, and ore value. Unique details of each camp are given, including historical facts, buildings and businesses present, and, frequently, interesting anecdotes about the resident miners. The work is indexed by topic and mine, and appendices offer a glossary and a copy of the Miners' Ten Commandments, originally published in the Placerville (California) Herald in 1853.

Elizabeth Emma Ferry traces the movement of minerals as they circulate from Mexican mines to markets, museums, and private collections on both sides of the US-Mexico border. She describes how and why these byproducts of ore mining come to be valued by people in various walks of life as scientific specimens, religious offerings, works of art, and luxury collectibles. The story of mineral exploration and trade defines a variegated transnational space, shedding new light on the complex relationship between these two countries and on the process of making value itself.

In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. A majority of them were skilled laborers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies. Readily accepted by American society, Welsh immigrants experienced a unique process of acculturation. In the first history of this exceptional community, Ronald Lewis explores how Welsh immigrants made a significant contribution to the development of the American coal industry and how their rapid and successful assimilation affected Welsh American culture. Lewis describes how Welsh immigrants brought their national churches, fraternal orders and societies, love of literature and music, and, most important, their own language. Yet unlike eastern and southern Europeans and the Irish, the Welsh--even with their ""foreign"" ways--encountered no apparent hostility from the Americans. Often within a single generation, Welsh cultural institutions would begin to fade and a new ""Welsh American"" identity developed. True to the perspective of the Welsh themselves, Lewis's analysis adopts a transnational view of immigration, examining the maintenance of Welsh coal-mining culture in the United States and in Wales. By focusing on Welsh coal miners, Welsh Americans illuminates how Americanization occurred among a distinct group of skilled immigrants and demonstrates the diversity of the labor migrations to a rapidly industrializing America.

"Scathing expose of the coal industry."
--"The New York Times Book Review
"On April 5, 2010, an explosion ripped through Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, killing twenty-nine coal miners. This tragedy was the deadliest mine disaster in the United States in forty years--a disaster that never should have happened. These deaths were rooted in the cynical corporate culture of Massey and its notorious former CEO Don Blankenship, and were part of an endless cycle of poverty, exploitation, and environmental abuse that has dominated the Appalachian coalfields since coal was first discovered there. And the cycle continues unabated as coal companies bury the most insidious dangers deep underground, all in search of higher profits, and hide the true costs from regulators, unions, and investors alike.
But the disaster at Upper Big Branch goes beyond the coalfields of West Virginia. It casts a global shadow, calling into bitter question why coal miners in the United States are sacrificed to erect cities on the other side of the world, why the coal wars have been allowed to rage, polarizing the country, and how the world's voracious appetite for energy is satisfied at such horrendous cost.
With "Thunder on the Mountain, "Peter A. Galuszka pieces together the true story of greed and negligence behind the tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine, and in doing so he has created a devastating portrait of an entire industry that exposes the coal-black motivations that led to the death of twenty-nine miners and fuel the ongoing war for the world's energy future.

Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest is the public face of Australia's once-in-a-lifetime mining boom. A swashbuckling entrepreneur in the finest West Australian tradition, Twiggy took on mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto at their own game - and won. Yet he has also been embroiled in two of the most heated debates in recent Australian history- over the treatment of Aboriginal people and the mining super-profits tax. In this unauthorised biography, Andrew Burrell traces Twiggy's business triumphs and disasters to reveal the complicated man behind the myth. Why do his mining ventures attract so much controversy? And what do his philanthropic schemes tell us about him and his plans for the future? It takes extraordinary force of will, combined with boundless energy and cunning, to create enterprises on such a mammoth scale. With the value of iron ore now integral to the health of the federal budget, Twiggy's business affects all Australians. This entertaining book gives a unique insight into one of the most powerful men in Australia today. 'A riveting investigation of one of our richest businessmen, biggest philanthropists and greatest fast-talkers.' Laura Tingle 'Burrell's Forrest is the epitome, some would say a caricature, of the Australian self-styled capitalist risk-taker, utterly convinced that 'what's good for Twiggy is good for the country!' But what if it's not? He didn't cooperate with the author, but Twiggy should read Twiggy. He might learn something about his methods, about his unapologetically mercenary manner and motivation, indeed about himself - the good, the bad and the ugly. Not just a terrific read, but an important life to have on the national record.' George Negus

Elizabeth Emma Ferry traces the movement of minerals as they circulate from Mexican mines to markets, museums, and private collections on both sides of the US-Mexico border. She describes how and why these byproducts of ore mining come to be valued by people in various walks of life as scientific specimens, religious offerings, works of art, and luxury collectibles. The story of mineral exploration and trade defines a variegated transnational space, shedding new light on the complex relationship between these two countries and on the process of making value itself.

This re-print of a rare and obscure pamphlet, originally published by Thomas Fiddick in 1913, details the various experiments which he undertook whilst dowsing for mineral lodes in his native Cornwall, as well as giving a potted history of mineralogical dowsing in the area. It also gives details of his Dowsing Cone and instructions for its use.

Wheal Jane was one of the greatest mines of the huge complex of workings in the Chacewater area in West Cornwall. A re-opening of Wheal Jane in 1969 coincided with the arrival in the area of John Peck, who became its 'official' photographer, recording all aspects of the work there until its final closure in 1992. This book collects together those photgraphs.

'It is not a case of governments and companies putting royalties and profits before people; instead it is as though people don't matter at all ...' In Mine-Field, Paul Cleary counts the true cost of Australia's mineral addiction. Whether it be coal-seam gas, LNG or coal mega-mines, a resources rush is happening in just about every productive corner of our country. Yet at the same time oversight and regulation have been hollowed out. High-risk projects are being approved without proper assessment of the long-term consequences. Water resources, farmland and national parks are under threat, and people, communities and industries are being steamrolled. A ground-breaking piece of reporting by the author of Too Much Luck, Mine-Field plots the dubious networks created and greased by mining companies to get their projects through, and exposes regulatory gaps that must be addressed to prevent enormous and irreversible harm to our society and environment. 'Mine-Field provides a warts-and-all, no-holds-barred view of Australia's mining industry. It is a must-read for anyone making an informed judgement on where our nation is going.' Tony Windsor 'This important book is compelling in its storytelling and chilling in its facts. It storms into the mining debate with a clarion call for more effective regulation. If you read it, you can't help joining the chorus.' Geoff Cousins

In 2007 Terry Crawford-Browne published the explosive Eye On The Money. It was primarily an account of the international banking sanctions campaign against apartheid during the 1980s, but also dealt with the early stages of the now well-documented South African arms deal scandal. Eye on the diamonds is a sequel to the earlier book and provides updated information on the uncovering of the scandal. Its purpose is to keep the arms deal saga and the venality of the war business in public focus. In 2008 Crawford-Browne was asked to lead a public interest application to the South African Constitutional Court after huge volumes of evidence confirmed how BAE and other arms companies paid massive bribes to politically well-connected members of the African National Congress - the so-called 'black diamonds' - to secure their contracts. His application forced President Jacob Zuma's reluctant appointment in October 2011 of a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the scandal. Eye on the diamonds' focus on diamonds links the colonial and apartheid histories of South Africa with the close histories of Israel and Palestine. It demonstrates how De Beers, the South African originated company which dominated the diamond cartel for more than a century is fast losing control to far more ruthless Israeli players. Crawford-Browne suggests that the diamond trade, which is critical to the twenty-first century war business, makes every diamond a 'blood diamond'. Blood diamonds provide the ultimate money laundering opportunity for organised crime, while the Israeli war business thwarts efforts at peaceful resolution of conflict. Israel itself has become a 'promised land' for organised crime where assassinations, money laundering and other criminal activities are justified in the 'national interest'. Crawford-Browne shows in this well-researched and hard-hitting book that the international war business and the corruption it unleashes is completely out of control.

'We think we are the lucky country, but what we really have is dumb luck - too much luck, more than we know what to do with.' - Paul Cleary In Too Much Luck, Paul Cleary shows how the resource boom, which seems a blessing, could well become a curse. We have never seen a boom quite like this one. Under-taxed and under-regulated, multinational companies are making colossal profits by selling off non-renewable resources. New projects are being rushed through weekly, but who is looking out for the public interest? As the boom accelerates, it will drive the dollar higher and higher, and force up the cost of doing business for everyone else. Industries that involve many jobs, such as tourism and education, will fade away. What happens if commodity prices suddenly collapse, as they have in the past? Or worse, when the resources run out? Many countries before us have been caught by the resource trap: a heady period of boom and growth, followed by a painful bust. Paul Cleary maps out the pitfalls, counts the human and environmental costs, shows what has worked overseas and suggests a better way forward - one which would turn this one-off windfall into a lasting legacy.

Born in Doncaster in the 1950s, Peter Tuffrey grew up with the collieries around him: Yorkshire Main at Edlington, Denaby, Cadeby, Rossington and Askern. Although it might have seemed that things would never change, they did, and Peter has now compiled Doncaster's Collieries to commemorate this once-vital part of the town's heritage. Using photographs from his own collection and the archives of local newspapers, Peter examines the histories of thirteen of the pits that once surrounded his home town, from the elaborate ceremonies which were staged to mark the start of work through to the acrimonious disputes with British Coal and the government of Margaret Thatcher, which so often marked the closure of the Doncaster collieries. The result is a fascinating view of a now-lost but widely remembered industry sure to appeal to those with an interest in the area.

Rail freight expert Paul Shannon takes a detailed look at rail freight developments since 1968. He examines the gradual decline of coal mining in the UK, the changing requirements of the power generators, and changes brought about by privatization. The text is supported by many photographs, diagrams and maps.