SLAG & The Golden Age Of Lead-Silver Ore

SEATTLE - Oct. 4, 2016 - PRLog -- Award winning blogger and writer David Eilers revives the forgotten history of mining in his recently published book SLAG & The Golden Age Of Lead-Silver Ore. Mining is an industry, once the pride of many western cities, that has seemingly all but disappeared, leaving behind ghost towns, abandoned mines, and crumbling smelting and refining works. Today, mining is looked at with disdain by many, its importance to the industrial revolution forgotten.

SLAG offers a fresh look at this unique part of American history, through a wide array of personal accounts, some never before published, intertwined with familiar places. It's full of fascinating characters—Horace Greeley, Rossiter Raymond, Mark Twain, Peter Cooper, the Guggenheims, among many others—who helped shape today's West and spurred the growth of modern America.

The book is a two-generation true story that begins in 1859 with nineteen-year-old German immigrant and mining engineer Anton Eilers. It weaves through six decades of adventure and success, then culminates in the early 1920's when Anton's son Karl, also a mining engineer, battles the Guggenheim brothers for control of the American Smelting and Refining Company (now known as ASARCO), then the second largest employer in the country. Using American Smelting's own investigative documents, SLAG reveals the little-known truth about how the Guggenheim family accumulated their massive wealth so quickly, doing so at the expense of American Smelting investors.

A product of twenty-five years of research, it is a meaty, well-documented read, but is human-centric, a non-technical work aimed at readers who have heard of the Gold Rush and the Comstock Lode, but don't know what they are or how they connect. It's told through the Eilers' family experiences—immigration, Civil War, Yellowstone adventure, stagecoach rides, moves West, Brooklyn female club societies—their lives and life choices evolving with their newfound wealth. As their story unfolds, the book reveals mining's turbulent history, gives context to its roots, exposes scandals, and explains the origins of mining towns tourists visit daily across the United States.

Adding importance to the book is the fact that mining is not a yesteryear industry. The author argues that, "Mining is more important than ever, providing metals like Cadmium, Cobalt, Lithium, Nickel, and Copper that are crucial for modern electronics. People forget that without mining a person couldn't use their cellphone, which requires 60 plus minerals, to contact Uber for a car, which needs even more minerals, and have it arrive in a timely manner, because roads are made of mined materials. That's why understanding mining's roots gives us perspective on today's industry and why mining, like it or not, is so important for our future. Readers of SLAG will not look at the West or mining the same again."

The book is available through Amazon.com.

About the Author: David Eilers operates eWillys.com (http://www.ewillys.com), read by jeep fans around the world, and has authored two other books, the Amber Panels of Konigsberg and Finding Virginia: Adventures Along the Rocky Trail of Life.