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Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts by Richard V. Francaviglia (review)

Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts by Richard V.... Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America' s Historic Mining Districts Richard V. Francaviglia. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991 Reviewed by P a u l F. S t a r r s Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557 A SLICE OF ANALYTICAL cultural geography, Richard Francaviglia's 1991 Hard Places: Reading the Landscape o f America's Historic Mining Districts is more readily respected than enjoyed. This is a decent book in a well-meaning academic sense. It is solid and strongly built, an Oldsmobile of the cultural landscape. Beyond its easily recognized worthiness as a pedagogical volume, this book suffers from overbearing seriousness. It fails to convey even a fleeting glimpse of the wondrous sense of joy that enchants devotees of ghost towns and the all-but-abandoned mining sites that dot North America and especially the arid American West. Not quite a field guide or a "how-to" book, nor a conventional historical geography, the text, with a terrific assortment of well-integrated photographs, is mostly just As APCG YEARBOOK · VOLUME 54 · 1992 "there." It gets a job done. After reading the 215 pages (with additional notes, bibliography, and other such emoluments) anyone would http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers University of Hawai'I Press

Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts by Richard V. Francaviglia (review)

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Abstract

Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America' s Historic Mining Districts Richard V. Francaviglia. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991 Reviewed by P a u l F. S t a r r s Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557 A SLICE OF ANALYTICAL cultural geography, Richard Francaviglia's 1991 Hard Places: Reading the Landscape o f America's Historic Mining Districts is more readily respected than enjoyed. This is a decent book in a well-meaning academic sense. It is solid and strongly built, an Oldsmobile of the cultural landscape. Beyond its easily recognized worthiness as a pedagogical volume, this book suffers from overbearing seriousness. It fails to convey even a fleeting glimpse of the wondrous sense of joy that enchants devotees of ghost towns and the all-but-abandoned mining sites that dot North America and especially the arid American West. Not quite a field guide or a "how-to" book, nor a conventional historical geography, the text, with a terrific assortment of well-integrated photographs, is mostly just As APCG YEARBOOK · VOLUME 54 · 1992 "there." It gets a job done. After reading the 215 pages (with additional notes, bibliography, and other such emoluments) anyone would

Journal

Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Oct 1, 1992

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