{"product_id":"opportunity-montana-big-copper-bad-water-and-the-burial-of-an-american-landscape-9780807033258","title":"Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA memoir-meets-expos  that examines our fraught relationship with the West and our attempts to clean up a toxic environmental legacy\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In 2002, Texas journalist Brad Tyer strapped a canoe on his truck and moved to Montana, a state that has long exerted a mythic pull on America's imagination as an unspoiled landscape. The son of an engineer who reclaimed wastewater, Tyer was looking for a pristine river to call his own. What he found instead was a century's worth of industrial poison clotting the Clark Fork River, a decades-long engineering project to clean it up, and a forgotten town named Opportunity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e At the turn of the nineteenth century, Montana exploited the richest copper deposits in the world, fueling the electric growth of twentieth-century America and building some of the nation's most outlandish fortunes. The toxic by-product of those fortunes--what didn't spill into the river--was dumped in Opportunity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In the twenty-first century, Montana's draw is no longer metal but landscape: the blue-ribbon trout streams and unspoiled wilderness of the nation's \"last best place.\" To match reality to the myth, affluent exurbanites and well-meaning environmentalists are trying to restore the Clark Fork River to its \"natural state.\" In the process, millions of tons of toxic soils are being removed and dumped--once again--in Opportunity. As Tyer investigates Opportunity's history, he wrestles with questions of environmental justice and the ethics of burdening one community with an entire region's waste. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Stalled at the intersection of a fading extractive economy and a fledgling restoration boom, Opportunity's story is a secret history of the American Dream and a key to understanding the country's--and increasingly the globe's--demand for modern convenience. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e As Tyer explores the degradations of the landscape, he also probes the parallel emotional geography of familial estrangement. Part personal history and part reportorial narrative, \u003ci\u003eOpportunity, Montana \u003c\/i\u003eis a story of progress and its price: of copper and water, of father and son, and of our attempts to redeem the mistakes of the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Beacon Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/25\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780807033258\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 248\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.80lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.70h x 5.70w x 0.70d","brand":"Brad Tyer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43084117180597,"sku":"9780807033258","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_432d9d12-b76e-4a2d-8034-1f0bd9f64e3c.jpg?v=1692110773","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/opportunity-montana-big-copper-bad-water-and-the-burial-of-an-american-landscape-9780807033258","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}