Beyond the Boundaries: Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840-1875 (Michigan) [Paperback]

Larry Lankton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Michigan | Publication Date: May 6, 1999

Spanning the years 1840-1875, Beyond the Boundaries focuses on the settlement of Upper Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, telling the story of reluctant pioneers who attempted to establish a decent measure of comfort, control, and security in what was in many ways a hostile environment. Moving beyond the technological history of the period found in his previous book Cradle to the Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines (OUP 1991), Lankton here focuses on the people of this region and how the copper mining affected their daily lives.

A truly first-rate social history, Beyond the Boundaries will appeal to historians of the frontier and of Michigan and the Great Lakes region, as well as historians of technology, labor, and everyday life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The social history of the mining frontier should be written and researched as well as Larry Lankton's Beyond the Boundaries....The book is a treat to read and a worthy contribution to helping us understand frontier mining societies."--Mining History News

"To tell his story, the author has mined diaries, manuscripts, newspapers, and company records, as well as a wealth of other primary and secondary literature. What emerges is a richly textured story that Lankton recounts with authority and gusto. It is a book that will interest local historians and those whose focus is social or western history."--Labor History

"With clarity, precision, and sound scholarship, Lankton examines everyday life on the Keweenaw fronteir from 1840-1875, the years of growing pains for the infant copper industry...Lankton describes with vivid detail the tedious day of a hard rock miner...Beyond the Boundaries is local history at its best. Lankton has provided a scholarly look at early life on the copper range in Michigan amid the transformation of a wilderness. the net of topics is widely thrown, but Lankton articulates everyday life based on the facts and with eloquent interpretation...Beyond the Boundaries belongs on the shelf of every library in Michigan next to its copy of Cradle to Grave."--Michigan Historical Review

About the Author

Larry Lankton is Professor of History at Michigan Technological University. His previous publications include Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines (OUP 1991), winner of the 1992 Great Lakes History Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195132432
• ISBN-13: 978-0195132434
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #879,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life on an Early Frontier, September 12, 2003

By 

Ben Kilpela - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Boundaries: Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840-1875 (Michigan) (Paperback)

Larry Lankton has achieved a great deal in bringing us closer to the early history of Michigan's Copper Country, to help us experience this rugged region in a rugged time as though we had lived there and in those days ourselves. This book, his latest, concerns private life during the first decades of the great Copper Rush on the shores of Lake Superior, which began some five years before the California Gold Rush and which was one of the most productive mining eras in human history (did you realize that?). Like many similar books on old times, Lankton's chapters are topical. Some are more interesting than others, and my favorites are the chapter concerning the early frontiersmen, young and scraggly bucks, who first came to the wilds of the Keweenaw Peninsula; another about labor at the early Copper Mines; and finally the one on crime in the early mining communities out in a region that was once at the edge of civilization. Lankton writes in an easy, congenial manner and bounces from topic to topic within the chapters without any organizational principle other than what he thinks we readers might find interesting about life in the woods and at the copper mines. Though this is not a book to start with when studying the Copper Country and its deep history, it is nonetheless a first-rate addition to the literature of the Keweenaw. (By the way, I live summers in Copper Harbor and my great-grandparents were all Finnish immigrants to the Keweenaw.) Thanks for a job well done, Larry.