100 books like A Town Called Asbestos

This book was released when I was starting my own work on mining history, and it greatly influenced everything I have written since. I love how LeCain traces how the demand for copper to electrify American cities led to the creation of massive holes such as the Bingham and Berkeley pits.

For me, the crux of the book is the idea that, as the quality of copper ore declined, mining companies used more energy and brute force machinery to dig unimaginably large open pits, producing landscape scars and toxic legacies that are still with us today. It makes visible the immense cost of America’s great industrial acceleration. 

I have rarely encountered a book that captures the local impacts of mining as well as Lianne Leddy’s Serpent River Resurgence. I was impressed with how the author, a Serpent River First Nation member, used oral history and family stories to document how the uranium rush at Elliot Lake, Ontario, irrevocably altered the ability of Serpent River members to hunt, fish, and gather off the land.

To me, the book's real strength was the author’s refusal to depict her fellow community members as victims, highlighting their successful campaign for environmental cleanup of the toxic legacies that remained long after the uranium mines had closed. 

This one challenged me to get out of my historian’s bubble and confront the impacts of mining in the present and near future, especially those associated with the looming energy transition. Pollon blew me away with sobering facts, such as the need to mine 3 billion tons of minerals to stay below 2 degrees of global temperature increases.

I was also captivated by the author’s accounts of his travels to the front lines of the critical minerals boom, which paint a vivid portrait of the vast scale of development associated with lithium, copper, and nickel development. Pollon’s book reminded me that technological solutions to climate change (important as they are) come with their own environmental and human costs.  

I have read a fair number of books, including Emile Zola’s famous Germinal, that depict coal miners as the helpless of a particularly horrible working-class hell.

I loved Thomas Andrews’ book because it highlights how much Colorado’s coal miners controlled their destiny. I was captivated by Andrews’ descriptions of how coal miners shaped the underground environment to enhance safety and increase their income (they were paid by the weight of ore mined rather than an hourly wage).

For me, the most fascinating part of it was Andrews’ revisionist history of the infamous Ludlow massacre of 1914, which the author argues was part of a larger shooting war where workers fought back against company guards and state militia rather than passively accept the coal companies’ efforts to control them.

In 1995, in the attic of a decommissioned mental hospital in New York State, a curator of New York State Museum, a local volunteer, a psychiatrist/ documentarian, and a photographer found a trove of suitcases, doctor’s bags, steamer trunks with Chinese motif, housekeys, photographs, earrings, belts, upright ladies Saratoga trunks (“so named because they could hold enough clothes for an entire summer season in the resort town of Saratoga Springs.")

The researchers ventured further into the hospital's now vacant sites, an abandoned bowling alley, and its burial grounds. Finally, they obtained permission to get a few hours with the medical records, which were stored in an abandoned hospital building contaminated with asbestos and lead, requiring them to don protective gear and booties.

Their hope was to bring the forgotten patients who’d spent years in the institution back to life. This book and its intricate details haunted me. There are so… show more.

How could you not love a book that explores the at times hilarious, at times tragic, but always fascinating impact of the banana in the United States and Latin America?

From the changing faces of Chiquita Banana to cookbooks and popular jingles like, “Yes, we have no bananas!” Soluri shows us how the banana became one of the most common fruits in the US diet. At the same time, he shows how US importers and marketers took control over, manipulated, and expanded, much of the production in tropical areas like Honduras.

On the production side, Soluri explores ironies like the fact that the United Fruit Company created the perfect breeding ground for pathogens by shrinking banana gene pools and shoving the same type of banana trees all in a row... or the tragic fact that “macho” banana workers became sterile after refusing to wear protective clothing.

John Soluri’s book is… show more.

Society has to face up to the fact that there are far too many people on planet Earth, probably several times more than is ecologically sustainable. It is no use denying it and making it taboo. Sure we need smaller ecological footprints – but we also need fewer feet. Overpopulation means that life on Earth is indeed on the brink of extinction. This is probably the best book I know that tackles the population issue with both science and compassionate ethics for all life.

Its central thesis is that the deficiencies and environmental harm of major efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being ignored, so that the privileged and elite can continue to live in comfort and affluence. The authors present evidence that advocates for alternative energy such as wind and solar greatly overestimate the potential of these sources to replace fossil fuel energy. At the same time, the development of wind and solar power has harmful environmental impacts, including the mining necessary to obtain rare earth minerals, the decimation of wilderness both in the process of obtaining minerals, and widely implementing wind and solar installations. The undue optimism associated with these activities makes it unnecessary for those who are already privileged to consider adopting a much less consumptive lifestyle.

John Todd is one of the preeminent ecologists on the planet. Over the course of his 5-decade career, he has been innovating and exploring ways in which we can work with nature to find solutions for major environmental conundrums. In this book, Dr. Todd explains the theory behind ecological design while also sharing inspiring examples of his work, ranging from restoring ocean fisheries, cleaning wastewater in hopelessly polluted ponds, to providing inexpensive access to sewage treatment in shantytowns with open, untreated sewers. This book shows that with the right mindset and commitment, ecological solutions are readily available for almost any situation. 

An oldie but a goodie, and a classic. Cronon’s lead essay “The Trouble with Wilderness” roused ‘90s environmentalism like a brilliant party crasher—but don’t miss Richard White’s “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living,” Giovanna Di Chiro’s “Nature as Community,” and, well, my own “Looking for Nature at the Mall.”