MSU News Service BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Montana State University historian Timothy J. LeCain recently received the prestigious George Perkins Marsh Prize for the best new book in environmental history.
The award-winning book, "Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines that Wired America and Scarred the Planet," tells the story of two enormous open pit copper mines, the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Mont., and the Bingham Pit in Utah. The American Society for Environmental History presented the prize to LeCain during its March meeting in Portland, Ore.
The ASEH prize committee praised LeCain's book as "a great read" that is also "gutsy, eloquently written and narrated, and carefully argued." The result is a book that "takes the reader on a marvelous journey, which starts with cosmic super-giant stars and their role in the creation of copper and ends with the engineers that built the technologies of ‛mass destruction' to access the king metal."
LeCain, an associate professor in MSU's Department of History and Philosophy, spent nearly a decade researching and writing "Mass Destruction," but said his fascination with Butte's Berkeley Pit goes back to his early childhood. Born and raised in Missoula, LeCain vividly remembers visiting the Berkeley Pit as a young boy.
"I was fascinated by the pit and the giant shovels and trucks, but also a bit troubled and frightened," LeCain said, explaining that Butte and the pit seemed shockingly different and distant from the family's home in Missoula Valley.
"In a sense, ‛Mass Destruction' is an outgrowth of that vague boyhood sense that my sheltered life in Missoula somehow depended on that harsh industrial world in Butte," LeCain said.
Previous recipients of the Marsh Prize include eminent authors and historians like William Cronin, Elliot West, Thomas Andrews, and Karl Jacoby. The prize is named after the 19th Century American scholar and writer, George Perkins Marsh, w
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| Contact: Evelyn Boswell evelynb@montana.edu 406-994-5135 Montana State University Source:Eurekalert |
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