The Riches Beneath Our Feet

Britain's mining and quarrying industries date back to the Stone Age flint mines of 2500 BC and still exist. In that period of more than 4,000 years the country's miners have produced colossal amounts of copper, tin, lead, zinc, iron, a lot of silver and some gold, and smaller amounts of just about every other metal from arsenic to uranium. The metals were the foundation of our industrial wealth and ease of living but they were driven by King Coal, which at its peak employed a million men and produced more than 200 million tons a year. Granite from Scotland, limestone from Southern England, sandstone and Welsh slate provided our homes, factories, roads and harbours. None of this could have been achieved without the genius of engineers such as James Watt, and the invention of powerful steam engines and many other technical advances. Our good fortune in this cornucopia of wealth derives from the Island's astonishing geological history: what is now Southern England was once on the Antarctic Circle. Professor Geoff Coyle, a former mining engineer and from a mining family himself, sketches the story of how mining has shaped Britain. The account is wide ranging, involving stories of the mineral wealth of Britain and its expliotation, from simple quarrying to the advent of mass production. There are tales of the miners' lives and the great mining families, as well as accounts of the miner's work, the conditions in the mines, and mining disasters. Coyle weaves his personal experience and passion into the story, illuminating the industrial history, geology, and technology. Each chapter highlights one of the main mining fields and explores the mineral in question, its exploitation, and how technological changes affected the mining techniques used.

Explains the processes responsible for creating rocks and minerals.

Leonardo da Vinci once mused that “we know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot,” an observation that is as apt today as it was five hundred years ago. The biological world under our toes is often unexplored and unappreciated, yet it teems with life. In one square meter of earth, there lives trillions of bacteria, millions of nematodes, hundreds of thousands of mites, thousands of insects and worms, and hundreds of snails and slugs. But because of their location and size, many of these creatures are as unfamiliar and bizarre to us as anything found at the bottom of the ocean. Lavishly illustrated with nearly three hundred color illustrations and masterfully-rendered black and white drawings throughout, Life in the Soil invites naturalists and gardeners alike to dig in and discover the diverse community of creatures living in the dirt below us. Biologist and acclaimed natural history artist James B. Nardibegins with an introduction to soil ecosystems, revealing the unseen labors of underground organisms maintaining the rich fertility of the earth as they recycle nutrients between the living and mineral worlds. He then introduces readers to a dazzling array of creatures: wolf spiders with glowing red eyes, snails with 120 rows of teeth, and 10,000-year-old fungi, among others. Organized by taxon, Life in the Soil covers everything from slime molds and roundworms to woodlice and dung beetles, as well as vertebrates from salamanders to shrews. The book ultimately explores the crucial role of soil ecosystems in conserving the worlds above and below ground. A unique and illustrative introduction to the many unheralded creatures that inhabit our soils and shape our environment aboveground, Life in the Soil will inform and enrich the naturalist in all of us.

Picked by the Guardian as one of '15 Modern Classics' books This double-sided foldout book takes you on a fascinating journey deep underground. One side of the foldout shows the ground beneath the city, whilst the reverse side shows the ground beneath the countryside. The underground scenes include tunnels and pipes, creatures' burrows, layers of rock and the planet's molten core, and run seamlessly into the next. Mixing urban and rural settings, covering subjects such as geology, archaeology and natural history, The Street Beneath My Feetoffers children the opportunity to explore their world through a detailed learning experience. This expansive concertina book opens out to an impressive 2.5 metres long, perfect for spreading out on the floor to pore over for hours.

Travelling performers struggle to impress rowdy western towns in Anything Goes, and ambitions clash as Montana miners fight for control of The Richest Hill on Earth; two novels from six-time Spur Award winner Richard S. Wheeler. Anything Goes The cowboys, gold miners, outlaws, gunmen, prostitutes, and marshals who populate the Wild West never see much big-city entertainment. Those western towns are too wild and rowdy for entertainers to enter, let alone perform in them. All that is about to change. Though the towns are starved for entertainment, the Follies struggles to fill seats as it grinds from town to town. Just when the company is desperate for fresh talent, a mysterious young woman astonishes everyone with her exquisite voice. The Richest Hill on Earth The city of Butte looks like a cancerous mélange of smoky mine boilers and rudely constructed sheds when newspaperman John Fellowes Hall arrives in 1892. But Butte is the place to get rich. It is also a city full of stories, perfect for a journalist looking to make a name for himself. As an employee of mining titan William Andrews Clark, Hall will find himself deeply involved in the best story of them all: the fight among the Copper Kings. This is the story of their struggle as well as the story of the ordinary people—the miners, their wives and children, the journalists, and even the psychics—trying to make their fortunes on the richest hill on earth. This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.