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Like Indigenous and Native American storytelling, children’s books have the power to paint a picture for children, shared though reading aloud, the lives, values, stories, and cultures of different people. It’s important to remember the past, especially as we move further away from it, even when that history is painful. Starting in the late 1800s...
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Cadillac Desert The American West & Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner
Cadillac Desert The American West & Its Disappearing Water

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  • Synopses & Reviews
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ISBN13: 9780140178241
ISBN10: 0140178244
Condition: Standard


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Awards

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Essential reading on timely topics.


Staff Pick

Almost 30 years since its original publication, this absorbing, no-holds-barred condemnation of water policy in the American West remains an essential book for understanding our current water crisis, with California grappling with the most severe drought in recent history and the threat of global water shortages growing ever more real. Reisner reveals how the West's transformation from a barren landscape to a lush paradise is the result of corruption, greed, and devastating environmental practices that have plagued a vast region of the country for well over a century. Regardless of where you live, this is vital reading on our most precious resource. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Review

"Reisner captures Western water history in Cinemascope and Technicolor. Cadillac Desert is timely and of national importance. Hurry up and read this book." The Washington Post

Review

"A revealing, absorbing, often amusing, and alarming report." The New York Times Book Review

Review

"Beautifully written and meticulously researched." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Synopsis

"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek
The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage.

Synopsis

"I've been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West's success with irrigation could be a mirage -- that it took water for granted and didn't appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it." - Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023

"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek

The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage.

This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.

Synopsis

This updated study of the economics, politics, and ecology of water covers more than a century of public and private desert reclamation in the American West.

Description

Includes bibliographical references (p. [522]-564) and index.

About the Author

Marc Reisner worked for many years at the Natural Resources Defense Council. His Cadillac Desert was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. He died in 2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Semidesert with a Desert Heart

Chapter One: A Country of Illusion

Chapter Two: The Red Queen

Chapter Three: First Causes

Chapter Four: An American Nile (I)

Chapter Five: The Go-Go Years

Chapter Six: Rivals in Crime

Chapter Seven: Dominy

Chapter Eight: An American Nile (II)

Chapter Nine: The Peanut Farmer and the Pork Barrel

Chapter Ten: Chinatown

Chapter Eleven: Those Who Refuse to Learn...

Chapter Twelve: Things Fall Apart

Epilogue: A Civilization, If You Can Keep It

Afterword to the Revised Edition

Acknowledgments

Notes and Bibliography

Index


3.7 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 3.7 (3 comments)

`
PDXBruce , August 14, 2017 (view all comments by PDXBruce)
I don't recall a better researched non-fiction book that I have read. The detail is amazing and the hubris and mendacity revealed is shocking. The U.S. embarked on a dam-building spree in the 1930s that allowed the cities of Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and the ridiculous California agribusiness industry to thrive in the desert with no thought to the inevitable dam siltation and soil salinization that would result. He argues that no irrigation-based civilization survived, and neither will this one. No one, not even Tom McCall and Jerry Brown, were able to hold onto their principles in the onslought of pressure to build more dams and despoil the environment. Reisner died in 200o at the age of 51. I wish he were still alive to add to this book. I couldn't help but think that this is the America Donald Trump wishes to return us to. Government agencies serving the wealthy rather than regulating their vast greed. He argues effectively that the water projects of that era were corporate welfare at a devastating level and their contribution to the national debt was substantial. It's a brilliant book and well worth reading, though if you have grandchildren, you're going to wonder mightily what the future holds for them.

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Peter Saucerman , September 01, 2011 (view all comments by Peter Saucerman)
25 years on, Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert remains the seminal record of water wars in the arid West. As we experience volatile climate change and staggering public debt, the follies of more than a century by the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation set the stage for the mess we are in today out in the West. This remains one of the finest examples of non-fiction writing of our time; it is a joy to read and re-read.

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Bernadette , May 14, 2011
This is my favorite non-fiction book!! I'm stealing part of 2 reviews from a few guys on Better World Books that sums up my thoughts better than I could...and I completely reiterate that the PBS 4-part series (which I got from the local library) is HIGHLY recommended: Randy from The United States | Aug 31, 2008 : I read this for a book club and the four of us used it as a springboard for literally hours of conversation. This should be required reading for anyone who claims to be an informed citizen living in the American West. Max from Portland, OR | Mar 4, 2011 In 1986, Marc Reisner published a book called Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. In it, Reisner fastidiously documents the appropriation of the West’s most valuable resources, water. The book, now 20 years old, prophetically detailed many of the problems of water supply and land degradation that we are now facing today. Water is the lifeblood of humanity and how we care for this resource will determine our fate. Cadillac Desert is scathing critique of American policy on water development, specifically towards the Bureau of Reclamation’s gun-slinging approach towards dam building. This book was the seminal work on water development and it reverberations will continue for however long we live in the Western United States. In all of Marc Reisner's work, he explores the relation humans have with their environment and how we have put extreme amounts of stress on that relationship. Throughout Cadillac Desert, Reisner describes the extent to which the government has augmented the environment of California, as succinctly described here: "The whole state thrives, even survives, by moving water from where it is, and presumably isn't needed, to where it isn't, and presumably is needed. No other state has done as much to fructify its deserts, make over its flora and fauna, and rearrange the hydrology God gave it. No other place has put as many people where they probably have no business being. There is no place like it anywhere on earth. Thirty-one million people (more than the population of Canada), an economy richer than all but seven nations' in the world, one third of the table food grown in the United States---and none of it remotely conceivable within the preexisting natural order (333)." Before Cadillac Desert, people looked at dams and other water developments as an example of human ingenuity and necessary for continued human existence. These leviathan alterations though have left nature severely scarred and Reisner uncompromisingly details the effects uncontrolled water development has had.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780140178241
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
06/01/1993
Publisher:
PENGUIN PUTNAM TRADE
Pages:
672
Height:
1.09IN
Width:
5.52IN
Thickness:
1.00
Age Range:
18 and up
Grade Range:
13 and up
Number of Units:
1
Illustration:
Yes
Copyright Year:
1993
Series Volume:
Bd. 17
UPC Code:
2800140178243
Author:
Marc Reisner
Author:
Marc Reisner
Subject:
Description and travel
Subject:
Water resources development
Subject:
Irrigation
Subject:
Political corruption
Subject:
History
Subject:
Environmental Engineering-Water Supply
Subject:
United states
Subject:
Irrigation -- Government policy.
Subject:
Political corruption -- West (U.S.) -- History.
Subject:
West (u.s.)
Subject:
Water-supply
Subject:
Nature

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