Billy Ray was the name his mother chose for him, but the doctor insisted his birth certificate read “William.” Knowing his mother, Billy Ray is sure she shared some choice words with the man, as “William” has been called “Billy Ray” ever since while growing up and living in the small mining town of Minden, West Virginia, where stories grow like trees. Mining Town Memories is a collection of poems that tell the tall and small tales of those living and dying near the New River. This is a look into the everyday life of the miner, how he strives to work under difficult conditions, surviving in and outside the mine. Families had to survive, too, on the little money earned, making extra effort to provide for their needs. A close insight into the mining life, this collection portrays the mental and emotional state of a hard-working band of brothers. Many shouted from the mines for God’s protection. Some souls were lost, while othes saved. The life of a miner is a life like no other—one of darkness and strain but also hope and light, revealed now for the first time in poetic verse.

In 1998, the Russian Arctic Coal Company decided to end more than 50 years of continuous activity in Pyramiden, in the High Arctic archipelago of Norwegian Svalbard. The remarkably abrupt abandonment left behind a mining town devoid of humans, but it was still filled with items constituting a modern industrial settlement. Today, the well-equipped Pyramiden survives as a conspicuous Soviet-era ghost town in pristine Arctic nature. Based on fieldwork studies, Persistent Memories examines how people lived and coped in this marginal town. The book is also concerned with Pyramiden's post-human biography and the way the site provokes more general reflections on possessions, heritage, and memory. Challenging the traditional scholarly hierarchy of text over images, this book stands out by using art photography as a means to address these issues and to mediate the contemporary archaeology of Pyramiden.

Morenci Memories is a nostalgic look at a place in southeastern Arizona that no longer exists: the copper mining town of "old" Morenci. Once a community of about 5000 people, it was reduced to rubble, scooped out and filled back in with copper landfill waste. Morenci Memories includes stories of early Morenci history that the author's parents used to relate as he was growing up as well as memories of the town during WWII. It is filled with the photographs he took and the memories the photos bring back. It ends with a series of pictures taken as the town was being dismantled.

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