Customer Reviews

Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41 (Women in American History)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Probably no book can do full justice to Butte, Montana which, for 50 years up to the start of World War II, was the most interesting city in America. While Butte was a wide open, boisterous mining town with illegal gambling and prostitution operating openly and unabashedly, it had vast flocks of fervent church goers and it managed to nourish its small pockets of refined culture and art. Butte had its millionaires, its poor, its highly diversified foreign cultures yet proudly asserting it Grand Americanism.

With all of that, Butte was ugly, seared grey by acid fumes from smelters; it perched on a hillside spiked by mines gallows and blemished by countless yellowish mounds of ore tailings as if the earth had spilled out its guts like vomit.

Mary Murphy's book, Mining Cultures; Men, Women and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41 does an admirable job of touring around the edges of what was Butte during those years. She got at only the edges for those are the limits she set for herself. Well researched and documented, she was careful not to report her numbers in boring, mind-numbing detail and she served them up garnished by an assortment of interesting and revealing anecdotes.

Ms. Murphy's book is a valuable addition to a pitifully small collection of works on a city which deserves greater study.

This is a fascinating look at changing manners and mores in a major industrial community during the two decades between the two World Wars. The city which Murphy dissects, Butte (Mt.), adds its own quirky character to this study. But you don't need to know much about Butte or mining to enjoy Murphy's engaging style, entertaining anecdotes, and keen insights about a turbulent period of social and economic change in urban America.