Boom, bust, boom

the long version

"Starting in his own backyard in the old mining town of Bisbee, Arizona -- where he discovers that the dirt in his garden contains double the acceptable level of arsenic -- Bill Carter follows the story of copper to the controversial Grasberg copper mine in Indonesia; to the 'ring' at the London Metal Exchange, where a select group of traders buy and sell enormous amounts of the metal; and to an Alaskan salmon run threated by mining. boom, Bus, Boom is a highly readable account -- part social hisotry, part mining-town exploration, and part environmental investigation. Page by page, Carter blends the personal and the interanational in a narraative that helps us understand the paradoxidal relationship we have with ta substance whose cenessit to civilization costs the environment and the people who mine it dearly. The result is a first-rate journalism that fasicinates on every level" -- Rear jacket flap.