The idea for this book emerged during a workshop titled “History Underground: Environmental Perspectives on Mining,” held at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany, during the summer of 2011. The goal of that workshop was to take stock of the global environmental history of mining, and so for three days participants presented papers that took us to four continents and deep into the past. Five of the essays in this volume were first presented at that workshop, and so we wish to thank the Rachel Carson Center and its directors, Christof Mauch and Helmuth Tricschler, for their generous support of the workshop, as well as Frank Uekötter, Donald Worster, and Bernd Grewe, all of whom served as session chairs and contributed valuable insights throughout the workshop.
We are also grateful to several other organizations for supporting this book. Our home institutions—Georgetown University and Carleton College—contributed funds for maps and the index and provided congenial homes in which to work. The University of California Press offered enthusiasm for the book that never wavered, despite its gestation taking longer than any of us wished. We are especially grateful to Niels Hooper, our editor at the press, for his encouragement and patience. Thanks also to Bradley Depew, who guided the book through all phases of assembling the manuscript, reviewing the artwork, designing the cover, and moving the book into production. In addition, we wish to express our gratitude to Steven Baker, who did a superb job copyediting the book and enhancing the clarity of our prose.
We also wish to thank our authors for joining this effort to unearth the environmental history of mining in North America. Each has made a unique contribution to this book, and the volume would be the weaker without any one of them. We particularly wish to single out Steven Hoffman, our wonderful and perceptive colleague from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, who contributed the essay on the mining of Alberta’s tar sands. Sadly, Steven passed away in 2015 before the book was completed. We are grateful to his sister Mary Lammert for giving us permission to publish his essay.
Lastly, to our families—Julie, Will, Patrick, Jesse, and Kat; and Anne, Meadow, and Henry—our heartfelt thanks for supporting us during the long journey this book required.