Book recommend

[Mark V]

I heard about this book on Dan Blanton's board, and ordered a copy on eBay because I'm interested in protecting anadromous fish including stripers, and this book was touted as the source of history of the war on stripers (by the Farm industry).

"Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner Written in 1993!

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Deser...adillac+Desert

The paperback arrived, read the first few pages and I'm very impressed with his writing style. You can read the first few pages using "Look Inside" on Amazon.

It's about heavy issues--history, and VERY important, and contentious issues of water & fish resources, but this author's writing style is riveting. This is going to be a fun ride!

Ok, a couple of paraphrase nuggets:

'In the New World, Indians had dabbled with irrigation, and the Spanish had improved their techniques, but the Mormons attacked the desert full-bore, flooded it, subverted it's dreadful indifference--moralized it--until they had made a Mesopotamia in America between the valleys of the Green river and the middle Snake. Fifty-six years after the first earth was turned beside City Creek, the Mormons had 6 million acres under full or partial irrigation in several states.'

'Thanks to irrigation, thanks to the Bureau--an agency few people know--states such as Califormia, Arizona and Idaho became populous and wealthy; millions settled in regions where nature, left alone, would have countenanced thousands at best; great valleys and hemispherical basins changed from desert blond to green'

'Only one desert civilization, out of dozens that grew up in antiquity, has survived into modern times. And Egypt's approach to irrigation was fundamentally different from all the rest.'

Dozens of ppl reviewed it in detail on Amazon, and I haven't read it yet, but I'm really looking forward to this read. I recommend the first few pages.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch review:
'The scale of this book is as staggering as Hoover Dam. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, it spans our century-long effort to moisten the arid West...Anyone thinking of moving west of the hundredth meridian should read this book before calling their real estate agent.'

What's YOUR review?

Cheers, Mark

[El Rey]

That book is a classic. Highly recommended for background. For updated info, try: "Introduction to Water in California," by David Carle.

Harlan

[John Sv]

Definitely a classic. It gets a little tedious IMO towards the end. (I.E. message received loud and clear, but there are still quite a few chapters to go)
Other fun CA water woes reading:
"Death in the Marsh" I forget who wrote it but he is an investigative journalist for the SacBee. It is about Kesterson.
"Salt Dreams" Also forget author but it is about the creation and status of the Salton Sea

[Fly Guy Dave]

Cadillac Desert certainly is a classic, like others have said. It is really exhaustively researched and well documented. His details on some of the shady dealings by some of the authorities in the past will absolutely astound you. Two that come to mind right away are Floyd Dominy and William Mulholland. Enjoy!

[Mark V]

Last week I flew from Sac thru DFW airport on a clear day, and out the window spotted Lake Mead, followed by the CO river/Grand Canyon, and then what I think was the Snake river,... as I read the following on P. 293:

"A political mirage for three generations of Arizonans, the Central Arizona Project is now a palpable mirage, as incongruous a spectacle as any on earth: a man-made river flowing uphill in a place of almost no rain. To see it there in late 1985, just being filled, induces a kind of shock, like one's first sight of Mt. McKinley or the Great Wall. But it is an illusion that works both ways. Up close, the Granite Reef Aqueduct seems almost too huge to be real. Where will all the water come from?

From the air, however, the aqueduct and the river it diverts are reduced to insignificance by the landscape through which they flow--a desert that seems too vast for the most heroic pretensions of mankind. The water the aqueduct is capable of delivering is more than Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago consume together. Pour it on Arizona, however, and it would cover each acre with two hundredths of an inch. In the summer, when the temperature reaches 135 degrees at ground level, that much water would evaporate before you had a chance to blink."

So I tried to spot the aqueduct out the window, and did see a couple aqueduct stretches that may be a part of the giant. The latest version of this book is c. 1993. Think the aqueduct has been re-named the Hayden-Rhodes aqueduct, and found where it begins here (map link).

Thanks guys for the other recommends on the subject, interested in the updated info.

Cheers, M

[Ned Morris]

And if you all want a glimpse into 50 years from now and a frightenly plausible scenario (I consider it volume 2 to Cadilac Desert) read "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi