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Chinese Coal Industry - An Economic History (Routledgecurzon Studies on the Chinese Economy, 2)
Elspeth Thomson
Manufacturer: RoutledgeCurzon
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ASIN: 0700717277 |
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The coal industry has been and continues to be of critical importance for China's economic modernization. With its huge labour force, country-wide infrastructure, and vital strategic importance for the economy, the industry presents special problems for reformers, and epitomises the problems of reform in the state industrial sector as a whole. This book examines the changes in the structure and operation of the Chinese coal industry from the mid-19th century to the present, concentrating on the years of reform. Although the focus is on the economics of the industry, the book also provides many insights into China's socio-political development.
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Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940 (Inside Technology)
Geoffrey C. Bowker
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
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The Art of Corporate Success
ASIN: 0262023679 |
Book Description
This is the story of how one company created and codified a new science "on the run," away from the confines of the laboratory. By construing its service as scientific, Schlumberger was able to get the edge on the competition and construct an enviable niche for itself in a fast-growing industry.
In this engaging account, Geoffrey Bowker reveals how Schlumberger devised a method of testing potential oil fields, produced a rhetoric, and secured a position that allowed it to manipulate the definition of what a technology is. Bowker calls the heart of the story "The Two Measurements That Worked," and he renders it in the style of a myth. In so doing, he shows seamlessly how society becomes embedded even in that most basic and seemingly value-independent of scientific concepts: the measurement.
Bowker describes the origins and peregrinations of Schlumberger, details the ways in which the science developed in the field was translated into a form that could be defended in a patent court, and analyzes the company's strategies within the broader context of industrial science.
Inside Technology series
Book Description
On a hot morning in May 1999, three Brazilian garimpeiros (small-scale miners) found a large pink diamond in the muddy waters of the Abaete River, a discovery that captivated the diamond trade. Beginning with this dramatic and revealing story, Matthew Hart takes readers on a journey far beyond the window at Tiffany's, into an obsessive, largely hidden, and utterly fascinating world.
From the fog-bound smugglers' paradise of Africa's Diamond Coast to the Manhattan offices of one of the world's most flamboyant diamantaires; from the London salesrooms of De Beers, which manages the longest-running cartel in modern business history, to a truck-parts shop fronting a diamond brokerage in Brazil, Matthew Hart has followed the diamond trail, encountering characters as memorable as the stones they seek. He recreates the modern history of diamonds, starting in 1869 when a native boy in South Africa found a large crystal on a farm, sparking a rush that brought Cecil Rhodes and Ernest Oppenheimer their glory. He chronicles the sensational diamond strike in the 1990s in Canada's Northwest Territories that has shaken the fortress of the old cartel, and profiles the audacious young female geologist Eira Thomas who, against all odds, discovered near the Arctic Circle one of the richest diamond fields in the world. He watches one of the finest diamond cutters operating on a priceless stone and portrays the lives of the countless, nameless cutters in India who have transformed the industry by making valuable the tiny stones that were once considered worthless.
Diamonds also have their dark side. "Malfeasance rustles in the background of the diamond world like a snake in dry grass," writes Hart as he documents the relentless and ingenious thievery that pervades the business and the even more damaging revelations of "war diamonds" financing brutal conflicts in Africa. The diamond world is at a crossroads, he notes, and "who will rule diamonds now and what form the once-secretive business will take are the issues of the day."
In the end, it is the stone itself that fascinates and bewitches the reader. Diamonds are accidents of nature, carbon crystals compressed deep underground millions of years ago; parts of them may even predate the Earth itself. And they are elusive, carried to the surface only in slender volcanoes known as "pipes," most of which are actually barren. Matthew Hart has captured the essence of an exotic substance and its world as surely as a diamond captures light: bending it, reflecting it, and returning it in a blaze of color.
Customer Reviews:
Diamonds and lessons in globalization.......2007-09-08
Though my background in diamonds - not counting some jewellery I got my better half sometime ago - is almost nil, I picked up the book because of the attractive title and jacket ... and I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the journey narrated by Matthew Hart.
The book, peppered by anecdotes and stories, presents a great overview of the complex diamond trade. The book is as much about globalization of business as it is about shining stones for which consumers pay millions. And this is where the author creatively weaves narratives around aspects of the Business of diamonds: production and extraction, value addition during each aspect of the chain, marketing and promotion and the complexities of pricing and gobalized supply chain.
The chapter (Rosy Blue) on the Indian contribution to the modern value chain of the diamond industry was especially interesting to read. Not many of us realize that much before Indians became synonymous with the global hi-tech and software industry, Indians were already well entrenched in the international diamond trade. The parallels between the two industries are unmistakable:
* Hundreds of thousands of cutters and polishers (programmers and designers?) work offshore in back-offices
* There has been a strong ambition to move up the value chain: by gaining representation as DTC sightholders (or management consultants to Fortune 500 clients)
* The majority of foot-soldiers in the trade remain `invisible' though a few leaders are the visible face of the trade in Antwerp (and in global technology consulting)
Interesting Gem.......2007-06-30
I thoroughly enjoyed the read. A good over view of the orgin, history, exploration, marketing, and commodity of the diamond market, without the dry technical jargon. I was completely facinated by the gamble one takes by purchasing large stones in the rough, and the tedicious craftsmanship that goes into cutting and polishing a beautiful diamond. I loved the history and discussion on famous diamonds and their journey though the hands of royality, soliders, religous conflicts, and theifs. Made you stop and think, what are diamonds really worth? I would of enjoyed color photos thou!!!!!
multifaceted intro to the diamond trade.......2006-07-04
This book covers the history of diamonds and the diamond trade from a series of viewpoints. Starting with a light introduction to diamonds before the 1800's, the book's emphasis is mainly on the last 200 years. Focusing on London, Antwerp, Brazil, India, the Diamond Coast, South Africa, Canada and a little on Russia, the book gives a good introduction to the geography of the diamond trade. The book shows us the lives of diamond miners, speculators, polishers, and the middlemen that connect all of these roles together to get stone from ground to a woman's hand. The text itself reads easily, and is part history book, part travelogue, part journalistic expose.
The history of De Beers is outlined, and its connections with various governments and high-up officials is touched upon, but this book is by no means a work of muckracking. The authorship is recent enough to cover blood diamonds from Africa, but not recent enough to include mention of diamonds as a source of capital and liquid wealth by Islamic terrorists. All in all a good book but not a great one. Worth the time to read it though.
Great overview, but lacks follow-through.......2006-03-12
I came away from this book with a picture of the global market for diamonds and how it's all tied together, from the palatial desks of moguls in London to the shacks of miners in Africa. Author Hart covers it all -- how diamonds are mined, processed, marketed, stolen; the ever-weakening power wielded by the De Beers cartel; the new low-end processors in India who have changed the dynamics of the trade. He does an especially good job elucidating the complex world of "war diamonds" emnating from bloody civil-warring states like Angola and Sierra Leone.
Author Hart is well-qualified for the task, having written on diamonds for numerous publications; but his ability to initiate a really engrossing story and drop it in mid-stream without taking us all the way there was frustrating for me as a reader. There were too many times when he started with an intriguing aspect of the trade, but moved too quickly to another aspect, leaving the reader hanging. How do the garipeiros, who found the "big pink" along a Brazilian river in chapter 1, live? Who gave them their $2 million for the big pink? Was it delivered in cash in a paper bag? How did the garipeiros spend the money so fast? After Eira Thomas finds a diamond pipe in the frozen Canadian north, he ends with this: "the pipes that Thomas found... contain some 138 million carats of diamonds. The deposit will support a mine for twenty years and supply the market with an annual $400 million worth of rough" -- that's it; that's all. What happened to Eira Thomas? Did she go on to find more pipes? Exactly how do the Canadian pipes alter the dynamics of De Beer's cartel? For a book like this, the devil is in the details -- the details that provide color and texture and take the readers along for the ride. Too often, Hart leaves out the details and doesn't finish the story, leaving the reader frustrated. The book would have really been enhanced by a few color plates of diamonds -- famous diamonds, rough diamonds, tiny brown diamonds cut in India, the big pink -- even if only two page's worth. In addition, as with so many books nowadays, copyediting is below par, with some really egregious typos in the text.
Still, this book is a great overview, and I feel that I learned a lot. Despite the limitations, anyone who loves gems, jewelry, commodities, and the romantic world of high-roller big business will enjoy this book.
"...as if a curtain had been ripped aside and there was the diamond business, spattered with blood, sorting through the goods.".......2005-12-03
p.187
This book made me glad that my wife and I twenty years ago decided to get neither the traditional diamond engagment nor wedding rings. I gave her a nice strand of pearls (probably another book out there) and we exchanged diamondless rings when we wed.
Chapter 9: Diamond Wars was horrifying in the sheer numbers of dead and maimed. Whenever teenage boys are fed drugs to go and slaughter civilians, there's more to it than idealogy, it's fed by sheer corporate earnings.
Recommended further updated reading: the reports on [...] account how the Kimberley Process, designed to eradicate the conflict diamonds, has in part been used to legitimize them.
Customer Reviews:
A very good book on the subject of the city........1999-05-28
A well written book on Virginia City and the silver mines. A good history of the whole area around Reno and Lake Tahoe.
Book Description
In this vivid account of the birth of modern California, J.S. Holliday frames the gold rush years within the larger story of the state's transformation from the quietude of a Mexican hinterland in the 1840s to the forefront of entrepreneurial capitalism by the 1890s. No other state, no nation experienced such an adolescence of freedom and success. By 1883 California was hailed as "America, only more so."
Holliday's boldly interpretive narrative has the authority and immediacy of an eyewitness account. This eminent historian recreates the masculine world of mining camps and rough cities, where both business and pleasure were conducted far from hometown eyes and conventional inhibitions. He follows gold mining's swift evolution from treasure hunt to vast industry; traces the prodigal plunder of California's virgin rivers and abundant forests; and describes improvised feats of engineering, breathtaking in their scope and execution.
Holliday also conjures the ambitious, often ruthless Californians whose rush for riches rapidly changed the state: the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode, the timber barons of the Sierra forests, the Big Four who built the first transcontinental railroad, and the lesser profit-seekers who owned steamboats, pack mules, gambling dens and bordellos--and, most important for California's future, the farmers who prospered by feeding the rapidly growing population. This wildly laissez-faire economy created California's image as a risk-taking society, unconstrained by fear of failure.
The central theme of Rush for Riches is how, after decades of careless freedom, the miners were finally reined in by the farmers, and how their once mutually dependent relationship soured into hostility. This potential violence led to a dramatic courtroom decision in 1884 that shut down the mighty hydraulic mining operations--the end of California's free-for-all youthful exuberance.
Unique in its format, this beautiful book offers not only a compelling narrative but also almost two hundred fifty illustrations, one hundred in full color, that richly illuminate the themes and details of the text: daguerreotypes, photographs, paintings, lithographs, sketches, and specially drawn maps.
Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Customer Reviews:
A beautiful book, beautifully written........2005-11-14
This is a beautiful book, beautifully written by one of the foremost experts on the gold rush and its impact on California history. Thoroughly researched, insightful, engaging, and richly illustrated. Highly recommended.
-David Burkhart, author of Earthquake Days: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire in 3-D.
A truly horribly written book..........2005-07-15
If I were the author and publisher, I would be embarrassed to have put this book to print. In 2005, it seems deplorably irresponsible that any "scholar" would claim to have understood the impact of California's 'rush for riches' without any real attention to the impact of the gold rush on Native Californians. Given that 130,000 of 150,000 Native peoples were killed by miners and ranchers during this time, paid $5 per scalp or decapitated head and reimbursed by the state for horses and ammunition, you would think a book like this would at least spend some time analyzing such inhumanely racist actions... Lots of glossy pictures can't cover up the real history.
Gold Rush highlights .......2005-07-07
This book was so highly recommended that I rushed to my library and checked out the hardcopy edition. Excellent use of color and fascinating collection of photographs. I am writing a historical novel centered in San Francisco and the Mother Lode. This book is simply excellent.
California, America Only More So.......2001-04-08
I found Rush For Riches to be much more than just a beautifully illustrated book about California (more than 100 excellent pictures and sketches). It is foremost a story well-told, and it provides a framework for understanding the past and predicting the future. As I read the book, I became aware of the forces that shaped California's economic and social evolution - from a sparsely settled, undeveloped, and neglected province of Spain/Mexico (1769-1848) to the state that by the 1890s had attained the image "America, only more so." Dr. Holliday points out that California's transformation reflects the very essence of the American experience: how freedom from the old rules and traditions that controlled life "back home" did, in California, give birth to inventiveness and risk-taking; how opportunity attracted a racially and ethnically diverse population; and how both industry and agriculture developed side-by-side to sustain the rapid growth.
Holliday's book emphasizes the importance of the application of "civic virtue" and "ethical understanding" in public affairs. Chapter by chapter, the book describes how the selfish interests of the Miners - collectively the dominant economic-political force in California during the 1850s - early 1880s, came into conflict with the individual rights of California's Farmers and Anti-Debris Association leaders. Through judicial efforts, the Miners' often anarchical power was finally reined in - after twenty-five long years.
Rush For Riches reviews the Spanish Period, Mexican Period, the Gold Rush, and concludes with Judge Sawyer's 1884 court decision which brought an end to hydraulic mining in California.
The book is a study of the past, yes, but it is more than that, it is a wake up call for all Americans to give serious thought to present and future social and economic problems which California and many other states now face.
Rush For Riches is the story of California's transformation into America's leading entrepreneurial state. It is history, only more so.
(I previously purchased from Amazon.com The World Rushed In, another book by J. S. Holliday, which I found to be very deserving of its 5-star Amazon.com readers' rating.)
Bob Kirchner
Book Description
Historical insight is the alchemy that transforms the familiar story of the Gold Rush into something sparkling and new. The world of the Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film--of unshaven men named Stumpy and Kentuck raising hell and panning for gold--is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. She finds a dynamic social world in which the conventions of identity--ethnic, national, and sexual--were reshaped in surprising ways. She gives us the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. With a keen eye for character and story, Johnson restores the particular social world that issued in the Gold Rush myths we still cherish. Maps, illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Four stars for content, one star for book design.......2007-03-24
Look, the content of this book is awesome and provides a vital link to the history of the gold rush in California! But the book design is terrible, because the paragraph length on average, is about three times normal, and this error in design makes the text quite difficult to read.
If you really care about the history of California, you should read Roaring Camp, but it won't be easy, simply due to the overly long paragraph structure.
Truth is, this book shows just how much we take good book design and layout, for granted. I'll never do that again, after reading Roaring Camp.
How such a supposedly good publisher could allow this kind of flawed paragraph editing to be allowed, that's the real mystery here.
Good book, if you're looking for history.......2005-02-22
If you're looking for a rip-roaring yarn of hoary old prospectors jumping claims and battling over gold nuggets, this is not it. Johnson's book is a thoughtful work of social history that reexamines the collective memory many people have of the gold rush (all-American gold-diggin' brawl) in the context of the letters, diary entries, legal cases and ballads that people who were actually *in* the gold rush used to document their lives.
The picture that emerges is one of a complex society that grew up around the promise of instant wealth. For one thing, Americans were not (in Johnson's account) always the largest group of miners in the Southern mines: French guardsmen expelled by their country, Chilean aristocrats, Mexican families, Canadian traders, Chinese sailors, and the Indian tribes that lived in the area before the gold rush began - everyone got in on the action. This cultural meeting place brought interactions both peaceful (lessons on how to use chopsticks) and violent (the practise of "frontier justice" usually targeted non-whites without caring whether the person hanged had anything to do with the original crime, if in fact an original crime took place.) Johnson's book sketches a believable portrait of the evolvoing politics of the region, and along the way explains everything from the origin of Chinese landromats to Antonio Bandaras's character in _The Mask of Zorro_ (suddenly a much more interesting movie since I read this book).
Johnson's writing from a gender-studies perspective, so she's particularly interested in the issues that sprung up in a (mostly) all-male mining society. If you're from a culture that considers women's work "unmanly," and have thus never been taught to cook or clean for yourself, how do you survive in a frontier environment? For some, the answer was you didn't (miners got sick a lot, and scurvy was one of the killers). For others you either learned to practise domestic chores yourself (which you could then sell or split with others), and/or you paid a lot of money for help. In other words, the gold rush not only attracted men after gold, but women who saw they could make money selling services (of all kinds) to the gold miners. Johnson's section on the French prostitutes, for example (who were going to get taxed and inspected for veneral disease if they stayed in France), explains how the real money-makers of the gold rush were often not the miners (who depended on luck to strike it rich) but the merchants who sold to them.
The thing I admired the most about this book was the author's voice. Johnson presents us with a bunch of stories, but instead of offering just one interpretation, she gives us many possible readings of stories and also reminds us whose voice is being left out. For example, in her section on miners diaries she reminds the reader that diary-writing was an important part of 19 C Protestantism, so most available diaries are written from a very religious, Protestant perspective. An older historical approach would have claimed that this meant most people in the camp were religious Protestants: Johnson, on the other hand, reminds us that the Catholics, non-religious Protestants and illiterates were there too, but they weren't writing diaries.
Overall, I thought Johnson's book was very impressive. It won't necessarily give you a complete picture of the gold rush (Johnson's only looking at the southern mines), but it will give you a more complete picture than you'd have if all you'd ever heard was the Hollywood version of history. Looking at some of the other reviews on this site, I gather that some people get mad at this book because it doesn't squish history into an adventure story, while others get mad because they see it as "liberal revisionism." I actually thought Johnson was really fair in her presentation of history: she spends a lot of time looking at the raiding and fights that were going on between *all* the racial groups in this area, and she makes it clear that the fact American miners came to dominate the mines had a lot to do with the fact the mines were in the USA, and the government tended to (but did not always) side with natives over foreigners. As for the revisionist angle, yes, Johnson's challenging a popular perception of what the gold rush was (an all-American bonanza) but she's doing so based on what seems to be a lot of historical evidence and the testimony of the miners themselves. In other words I'm gathering most of the people who hated this book were looking for something completely different than what I would look for in a history book. If you, like me, are looking for well-written interpretation of historical evidence that acknowledges when the author *doesn't* know something, this is a good history book.
Inteligent and Thoughtful.......2004-04-27
In my opinion, Susan Johnson's research and demonstration of scholarship makes it inevitable for her to prove and defend her hypothesis throughout her book, ultimately confirmed in a solid thesis statement. What I find most intriguing about this book is the utilization of sources available to bring an "unheard" story, the "othered" story, to print. In Johnson's preface, she discusses the ideas for possible worlds of social justice. By choosing to undertake writing this book, Johnson deconstructs the social space of the California Southern Mines and through her thoughtful, inclusive reconstruction she gives a place to "others" whose testimonies and experience previously went unheard in a "mainstream" historical world. However, it is the stories that Johnson brings to life in this piece that truly `paints a historical picture' of the California Gold Rush.
Potential that doesn't follow through.......2003-03-03
While some of the topics Johnson brings up such as the mixing of cultures that takes place during this time, she lacks the organizational skills and talent as a writer to make the book compelling. Her work is all over the place and it's hard to follow especially when trying to use it as the basis of a research paper (which is what I had to do for a upper division history class of mine).
Not very well-written.......2002-08-20
I always thought reading a book about Gold Rush-era California would be interesting, but Susan Lee Johnson has been able to make it seem not very compelling.
This is a "People's History" sort of book, a tale of the minor characters in history, in particular the miners and their society. In such a book, there are oppressors (often white males) and oppressed (usually women and non-whites). Johnson supports this thesis with numerous tales of robbery and murder, which may all be true, but also reflect a political agenda that she is trying to promote. This removes any real objectivity from her book.
The main problem with this book, however, is it is not very well-organized. Johnson has filled the book with some good (and some not-so-good) anecdotes, but there is not all that much joining these stories together. The result is a sometimes informative but usually rambling work. In the end, I felt like I hadn't learned very much about this era other than a few tales that needed a better context.
Customer Reviews:
Land in California.......2005-02-21
When W. W. Robinson wrote this history of land titles in California he was employed by Title Insurance and Trust Company in Los Angeles. He was what was referred to as a Titleman, a person trained to research and interpret land ownership and land titles. As a fellow Titleman for over 40 years I have purchased at least 100 copies of this book, which I use as a training aid in the title insurance industry. It is easily the best introduction to the history of California land ownership and titles and the origins of such legal rights. As a history book, a training aid, or just as a pleasure to read, this narrative would be an excellent choice.
An Excellent Primer.......2005-01-18
"Land in California" is an excellent primer for those looking to get a grasp on how California was settled. It offers a clear description of who the players were in the settling of the state and offers great leads for other fields of inquiry into state history. A "must-have" for any California history buff.
Story of Land in California.......2002-04-05
This was an excellent book full of information not often found in other books on the California Ranchos. The author actually includes a chapter on Indian land ownership that is hard to find anywhere else. Some of the smaller ranchos were left out, which is why I gave this a 4 star reading, but well worth your time.
Land in Californnia.......2000-04-06
This is an engrossing, thoroughly researched book about California land grants and ranchos during the period 1769-1846. Lists all such grants for the entire state. A "must read" for anyone researching the history of California.
Customer Reviews:
Environmental Justice.......1999-12-10
This book explains in great detail the injustices committed agains the Dineh (Navajo) people in the last century. The book explains the connection between Uranium mining and ill effects on the Dineh people. It explores issues like the health effects, environmental effects, and workers compensation for uranium mining. It has firsthand accounts of victims of radiation exposure. This book was very helpful for a paper I wrote for a college course. I would reccommend this book for those interested. It is well written and explains the uranium issue in a understandable way.
Average customer rating:
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The California Gold Rush (World History)
Tom Ito
Manufacturer: Lucent Books
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ASIN: 1560062932 |
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Hills of Silver: The Yukon's Mighty Keno Hill Mine
Aaro E Aho
Manufacturer: Harbour Publishing
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1550173944
Release Date: 2006-12-01 |
Book Description
The Yukon is famous for its Klondike gold rush, but it was the site of another major mineral discovery in 1918 that touched off its own stampede of sourdoughs and eventually produced more paydirt than the Klondike. This was the fabulously rich Keno Hill silver deposit, which made the Yukon one of the world's leading silver producers and backstopped the territorial economy for decades.
And as the Klondike strike gave rise to the boom town of Dawson, the Keno strike fostered feisty Keno City, the last of the wild west mining towns: "Down in shacks by Lightning Creek, vintners and vendors of moonshine and the sporting girls catered to the miners on weekends amid scratching gramophone melodies. At that time Keno was a really lively town of 800 men, very few women and much hard drinking. Some of the boys had an old car called the Rum Runner that took cases of booze up to the camps every evening. At first both camps had the same second Sunday off but with two crews in, there was not enough of everything desirable to go around and a running donnybrook would break out. After a few wholesale brawls, which inevitably led to more drinking and absenteeism on Mondays, the companies alternated their Sundays off." At the top of the social order was the puritanical mine boss, Livingstone Wernecke, who never stopped inveighing against vice, "but Wernecke found that he did not run Keno; it ran itself."
The story of Keno's discovery, development and decline is one of the great adventures of the north, and it is told here by one of the Yukon's legendary mining personalities, Dr. Aaro Aho. Dr. Aho's authoritative voice on mining matters is nicely offset by his taste for juicy gossip, as he fills the book with delightful portraits of such characters as Arthur Hester (aka Whiskey Jack), a dishevelled former engraver to Queen Victoria of whom the Wernecke said, "Never give Hester anything but meat or grease or he will find some way of turning it into alcohol." Hester, who could dash off a passable likeness in trade for a drink no matter how drunk, kept well oiled nonetheless. Or Nora, the tough prostitute who went about town dressed in nothing but toenail paint. When a customer once asked why her foot was covered in blood she explained she had killed a rabbit for dinner by kicking it. Or Marie, a pretty young woman who did very well as a "girl on the line" bought two houses, started a restaurant and taxi business, but lost her mind and was seen wading through deep snow placing handfuls of jewellery in people's mail boxes before disappearing into the wilderness.
Aho extends his account to cover the mining history of the entire Stewart River basin, which in addition to its wealth of silver, was a major producer of lead, zinc and gold. Hills of Silver is not just the colourful story of Keno Hill, but an important addition to the history of Canadian mining.
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- The Unofficial Guide to Hot Careers
- Weiss Ratings' Guide to Banks and Thrifts: A Quarterly Compilation of Financial Institution Ratings
