Scholars have historically characterized miners as among the most militant industrial workers due to their tightknit communities, difficult working conditions, and relative geographic isolation. These two new works on copper miners move beyond this classic, if one-dimensional, image to focus on miners' contradictory class/political identities, the gendered construction of working-class men and women, and mining companies' physical and ideological organization of mining communities. They examine a crucial commodity—copper—that was historically central to the economic development, politics, and labor movements of Chile and the United States Southwest.