Mining Engineers and Authority on the US-Mexico Border: Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855–1910. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2018. 184 pp. $44.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-94-385983-2

Demand for copper for electrical wire and electrical apparatus soared in the last decades of the nineteenth century, spurring a key transition: from placer mining, in stream beds and using “pan, sieve, or sluice” (6), to more and more heavily industrial lode mining, in hard rock and underground, where desirable minerals lay alongside and within other geological formations. L. D. Ricketts industrialized the Moctezuma Copper Mine, near Nacozari, Arizona, for instance, after its easily accessed ores were played out; this industrialization also affected the environment in another way—through its central power station, which ran on and burned up the wood of the surrounding forest. Development companies sought investment opportunities among the underperforming or abandoned mines across the region, which they attempted to rehabilitate through more intensive methods and a deeper, regional engineering knowledge.