Synopses & Reviews
An epic struggle over land, water, and power is erupting in the American West and the halls of Washington, DC. It began when a 4,000-square-mile area of Arizona desert called Black Mesa was divided between the Hopi and Navajo tribes. To the outside world, it was a land struggle between two fractious Indian tribes; to political insiders and energy corporations, it was a divide-and-conquer play for the 21 billion tons of coal beneath Black Mesa. Today, that coal powers cheap electricity for Los Angeles, a new water aqueduct into Phoenix, and the neon dazzle of Las Vegas.
Journalist and historian Judith Nies has been tracking this story for nearly four decades. She follows the money and tells us the true story of wealth and water, mendacity, and corruption at the highest levels of business and government. Amid the backdrop of the breathtaking desert landscape, Unreal City shows five cultures collidingHopi, Navajo, global energy corporations, Mormons, and US government agenciesresulting in a battle over resources and the future of the West.
Las Vegas may attract 39 million visitors a year, but the tourists mesmerized by the dancing water fountains at the Bellagio dont ask where the water comes from. They dont see a city with the nations highest rates of foreclosure, unemployment, and suicide. They dont see the astonishing drop in the water level of Lake Meadwhere Sin City gets 90 percent of its water supply.
Nies shows how the struggle over Black Mesa lands is an example of a global phenomenon in which giant transnational corporations have the power to separate indigenous people from their energy-rich lands with the help of host governments. Unreal City explores how and why resources have been taken from native lands, what it means in an era of climate change, and why, in this city divorced from nature, the only thing more powerful than money is water.
Review
An Amazon.com Best Book of the Year"Nies' great triumph is to emphatically bring the 'bloody nuisance' of the story behind the growth of the West to the public eye. Her book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the largely hidden history and the forgotten deals and injustices that keep Las Vegas and Los Angeles glimmering." Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times
"Judith Nies history of the region and brutal political maneuvering that helped facilitate the rise of Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles is thoroughly engaging and at times heartbreaking
this is the real American hustle.”Las Vegas Review-Journals
A hard-hitting chronicle of the hidden history behind the creation of Las Vegas
An important, multifaceted page-turner.” Kirkus Reviews
"If you're headed to Las Vegas for vacation, pack this book along. In between visits to the giant pyramids and faux Manhattans, read it to get a real understanding of exactly how fragile this mirage is." Bill McKibben, author Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape
In this cautionary tale of money and power, Judith Nies has created a heart-wrenching account of the exploited American Westits resources and its people. Unreal City exposes the strange bedfellows and revolving doors that fuel crony capitalism. At the heart of it all is the public-private plunder that has sadly become the nations new normal, and the tragic toll it takes on everything in its path. Unsettlingly reminiscent of Polanskis Chinatown, it is a brave undertaking.” Sally Denton, investigative reporter, historian, and author of The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America
This book is blood-boilingly splendid. Meticulously reported and shocking in detail, Unreal City brilliantly dissolves the fraudulently spun myths of the American West to reveal a grim, heartbreaking progression of despoliation, waste, corruption, and betrayal of native peoples. This is the reality behind the insatiable Western Sunbelt and that desert chimera, Las Vegas. Throughout, Judith Nies brings scorching, revelatory light to the biggest undertold issue in America, the destruction of the West by unchained greed.” Katherine A. Powers, recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Unreal City is a thriller equal to any fiction out there. With impeccable journalism and an easy, lively style, Nies takes us from the halls of political power to the boardrooms of industry to the mesa-top villages and hogans of Black Mesa to tell this story of the energy demands of southwestern cities and the impact on traditional Native Americans. Rich in detail and beautifully told, this is a gripping story, and one we should heed as we struggle to balance our competing needs for energy, quality of life, and environmental and cultural preservation.” Lucy Moore, environmental mediator and author of Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country and Common Ground on Hostile Turf: Stories from an Environmental Mediator
Unreal City is history, social commentary, and the tale of corporate manipulation to wrest abundant natural resources from native peoples lands. This work is the best of journalism and historical investigative reporting of a story that has simply not been visible prior to Nies research and writing.” Carol C. Harter, president emerita and regents professor at the University of N evada, Las Vegas
Synopsis
When award-winning author Judith Nies attended a glamorous movie-star event in Phoenix in 1982, she thought it was a celebration of the ancient culture of the Hopi Indians. Why, she wondered, did the reception include the executives of some of the largest mining, construction, and utility corporations in America?
Ten years earlier, as a young congressional staffer, she had watched Congress divide up between the Hopi and Navajo 4,000 square miles on Black Mesa, Arizona, lands that held the richest untouched coal deposit in the United States. Soon 15,000 Navajo were being relocated, and 21 billion tons of coal was being strip-mined to provide cheap electricity for Los Angeles, pump water into Phoenix, and illuminate the dazzle of Las Vegas Strip. In the intervening years, she followed the money that flowed from Black Mesa and witnessed long-term drought, temperatures up, and water supplies down.
Las Vegas has much to teach us in an era of climate change. The desert city may still attract 39 million visitors a year, but tourists dont see a city with the highest rates of foreclosure, unemployment, or suicide in the nation. They dont see the astonishing drop in the water level of Lake Mead, or follow the route of the new Chinatown,” a multi-billion dollar water-pipeline into a mountain aquifer 200-miles north. The same mining and construction companies operate globally and are spending millions to convince us that climate change isnt happening and coal can be clean.” But for Las Vegas, and for the United States, the mirage of limitless supply and limitless wealth is now dissolving.
About the Author
Judith Nies is the award-winning author of three nonfiction books- The Girl I Left Behind: A Personal History of the 1960s, Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition, and Native American History: A Chronology, which won the Phi Alpha Theta prize in international history. Niess journalism, book reviews, and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Orion, Harvard Review, Womens Review of Books, and American Voice. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.