Download or read book Fire and Brimstone written by Michael Punke and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead. Fire and Brimstone recounts the remarkable stories of both the men below ground and their families above, focusing on two groups of miners who made the incredible decision to entomb themselves to escape the gas. While the disaster is compelling in its own right, Fire and Brimstone also tells a far broader story striking in its contemporary relevance. Butte, Montana, on the eve of the North Butte disaster, was a volatile jumble of antiwar protest, an abusive corporate master, seething labor unrest, divisive ethnic tension, and radicalism both left and right. It was a powder keg lacking only a spark, and the mine fire would ignite strikes, murder, ethnic and political witch hunts, occupation by federal troops, and ultimately a battle over presidential power.
Download or read book The Butte Irish written by David M. Emmons and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering study, David Emmons tells the story of Butte's large and assertive population of Irish immigrants. He traces their backgrounds in Ireland, the building of an ethnic community in Butte, the nature and hazards of their work in the copper mines, and the complex interplay between Irish nationalism and worker consciousness. From a treasure trove of "Irish stuff," the reports, minutes, and correspondence of the major Irish-American organizations in Butte, Emmons shows how the stalwart supporters of the RELA and the Ancient Order of Hiberians marched and drilled for Irish freedom---and how, as they ran the town, the miners' union, and the largest mining companies, they used this tradition of ethnic cooperation to ensure safe and steady work, Irish mines taking care of Irish miners. Butte was new, overwhelmingly Irish, and extraordinarily dangerous---the ideal place to test the seam between class and ethnicity.
Download or read book Mining Childhood written by Janet L. Finn and published by Farcountry Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mining Childhood offers a fresh perspective on Montana history. Drawing from a broad range of archival materials and oral histories, the book offers a child’s-eye view of key events in Butte’s history and considers how social, political, and economic forces shaping life in Butte left their marks on children. With its rich stories, the book captures children’s experiences of school, play, and work by exploring their joys and miseries, their keen impressions of life in Butte, and the varied lessons learned. These stories illuminate the meaning and purpose of mining life in Butte: people came in search of a better life for themselves, and they stayed and struggled in order to build a better life for their sons and daughters—living with the hardships and dangers of mining life so that their children might have a life beyond mining. Children were, quite simply, Butte’s reason to be.
Download or read book A Brief History of Butte Montana written by Harry Campbell Freeman and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Battle for Butte written by Michael P. Malone and published by Emil and Kathleen Sick Book We. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since it was first published in 1981,The Battle for Buttehas remained the most sophisticated account of the events in Butte and the best treatment of the influence of copper in the political history of Montana." -- from the new Foreword The late Michael P. Malone was president of Montana State University in Bozeman and author ofC. Ben Ross and the New Deal in Idahoand coauthor, with Richard B. Roeder and William L. Lang, ofMontana: A History of Two Centuries.William L. Langis professor of history at Portland State University.
Download or read book Mining Cultures written by Mary Murphy and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-02-03 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Butte, Montana, long deserved its reputation as a wide-open town. Mining Cultures shows how the fabled Montana city evolved from a male-dominated mining enclave to a community in which men and women participated on a more equal basis as leisure patterns changed and consumer culture grew. Mary Murphy looks at how women worked and spent their leisure time in a city dominated by the quintessential example of "men's work": mining. Bringing Butte to life, she adds in-depth research on church weeklies, high school yearbooks, holiday rituals, movie plots, and news of local fashion to archival material and interviews. A richly illustrated jaunt through western history, Mining Cultures is the never-told chronicle of how women transformed the richest hill on earth.
Download or read book Copper Chorus written by Dennis L. Swibold and published by Montana Historical Society. This book was released on 2006 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book devoted to Montana's long history of industrial newspaper ownership and the consequences for democracy. The work also reveals the costs paid by owners and their journalists, whose credibility eroded as their increasingly constricted newspapers lapsed into ambivalence and indifference. The story offers a timeless study of the conflict between commerce and the notion of a free and independent press.
Download or read book Lost Butte Montana written by Richard I. Gibson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the stately Queen Anne mansions of the West Side to the hastily constructed shanties of Cabbage Patch, Lost Butte, Montana traces the citys history through its architectural heritage. This book includes such highlights as the Grand Opera House, once graced by entertainers and cultural icons like Charlie Chaplin, Sarah Bernhardt and Mark Twain; the infamous brothels protested by reformer Carrie Nation, wielding her hatchet and sharp tongue; and the Columbia Gardens, built by copper king William Clark as a respite from the smoke and toil of the mines and later destroyed by fire. Through the stories of these structures, lost to the march of time and urban renewal, historian Richard Gibson recalls the boom and bust of Butte, once a mining metropolis and now part of the largest National Historic Landmark District.
Download or read book A Darkness Lit by Heroes written by Doug Ammons and published by . This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine disaster of 1917 is one of the most inspiring and heart-rending stories in the history of the American West. It was the worst hard rock mining disaster ever, killing 168 men, affecting nearly 1000 miners and the whole city of Butte, Montana. In 1917, the Speculator mine was the most complex and deepest copper mine on the ¿richest hill on earth¿, with 400 men in more than 300 miles of tunnels and workings extending 3700 feet underground. Just before midnight, June 8th, a fire started 2400 feet down in the main shaft, and rapidly filled the tunnels with smoke and deadly gas. Most of the miners had no idea where the fire was, but were suddenly thrust into life and death situations, making split second decisions on which everything depended. Their actions ranged from animal terror to the most inspirational courage. They desperately tried every means to escape the labyrinth to other adjacent mines as the poison gas chased and overwhelmed many. Hundreds were trapped, including groups that sealed themselves into dead-end tunnels to try to survive the onslaught of gas. The book is written in the form of a novel from the miners¿ perspective and their families above ground, but is journalistically true in detail, based on 600 pages of eye-witness testimony from 70 survivors. This testimony was carefully matched with mining maps to reconstruct the men¿s actions and thoughts. The disaster unfolds like an accelerating avalanche, a chaos of frantic terror along with tremendous self-sacrifice of the miners for each other. It then turns into a detective story as the rescuers fight against time with the survivors¿ lives ebbing away, hidden behind air-tight walls deep in the mine, lost in an ocean of darkness and rock. This is a true story of the hearts of men and the human spirit, as men are stripped down to their core with nothing left to sustain them but their wills and devotion to each other: ¿no greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for his friend.¿
Download or read book The Richest Hill on Earth written by Richard S. Wheeler and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the West's most beloved writers sets his sights on the war of the Copper Kings in late 19th-century Montana, and their struggle for control of the Orichest hill on Earth.
Download or read book Looking for Betty MacDonald written by Paula Becker and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Betty Bard MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and The Egg and I sold its first million copies in less than a year. The public was drawn to MacDonald’s vivacity, her offbeat humor, and her irreverent take on life. In 1947, the book was made into a movie starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and spawned a series of films featuring MacDonald's Ma and Pa Kettle characters. MacDonald followed up the success of The Egg and I with the creation of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a magical woman who cures children of their bad habits, and with three additional memoirs: The Plague and I (chronicling her time in a tuberculosis sanitarium just outside Seattle), Anybody Can Do Anything (recounting her madcap attempts to find work during the Great Depression), and Onions in the Stew (about her life raising two teenage daughters on Vashon Island). Author Paula Becker was granted full access to Betty MacDonald’s archives, including materials never before seen by any researcher. Looking for Betty MacDonald, a biography of this endearing Northwest storyteller, reveals the story behind the memoirs and the difference between the real Betty MacDonald and her literary persona. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lr6iVK4zWk
Download or read book Tracing the Veins written by Janet L. Finn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-08-03 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Novel, engaging, and interesting. . . . [Finn] conveys the urgency of understanding the intertwining sources of conflict and struggle in the contemporary world."—Benjamin S. Orlove, University of California, Davis "Finn blends trenchant scholarship and stylistic mastery with exceptional intelligence. If this is not cutting edge, I just wonder what is."—Jean-Paul Dumont, George Mason University
Download or read book Work Song written by Ivan Doig and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] novel that best expresses the American spirit." –The Chicago Tribune “If America was a melting pot, Butte seemed to be its boiling point,” observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher and inveterate charmer who stole readers’ hearts in The Whistling Season. A decade later, he steps off the train and into the copper mining capital of the world in its jittery 1919 heyday. While the riches of “the Richest Hill on Earth” may elude him, once again a colorful cast of local characters seek him out. Before long, Morrie is caught up in the clash between the ironfisted Anaconda Mining Company, radical “outside agitators,” and the beleaguered miners. As tensions build aboveground and below, Morrie finds a unique way to give a voice to those who truly need one, and Ivan Doig proves yet again why he’s reigning king of Western fiction.
Download or read book Copper Camp written by Writers Project of Montana and published by Riverbend. This book was released on 2001-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories about life in Butte during its fabulous mining heyday.
Download or read book Red Harvest written by Dashiell Hammett and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The steadfast and sturdy Continental Op has been summoned to the town of Personville—known as Poisonville—a dusty mining community splintered by competing factions of gangsters and petty criminals. The Op has been hired by Donald Willsson, publisher of the local newspaper, who gave little indication about the reason for the visit. No sooner does the Op arrive, than the body count begins to climb . . . starting with his client. With this last honest citizen of Poisonville murdered, the Op decides to stay on and force a reckoning—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
Download or read book Buster Midnight s Cafe written by Sandra Dallas and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: May Anna Kovacks was discovered on the dustry streets of Butte, Montana and went on to become a Hollywood star. War, fame, marriage, love, and heartbreak came and went. What never changed was the bond she shared with her two best friends, Effa Commander and Whippy Bird. When scandal, murder, and betrayal made a legend of May Anna, only Effa and Whippy Bird could set the record straight.
Download or read book A History of American Mining written by Thomas A. Rickard and published by . This book was released on 1987-06-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: