Cadillac desert
"Beautifully written and meticulously researched."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 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. At its core, this book is a history of the massive engineering projects—dams, aqueducts, and diversions—that allowed the arid American West to bloom into a collection of major cities and agricultural hubs. It frames the development of the West not as a triumph of nature, but as a triumph of political maneuvering and federal spending. Why It Stands Out The "Money Flows Uphill" Thesis: Reisner famously argues that in the West, water doesn't follow the laws of physics; it follows the laws of money and power. He exposes how bureaucratic rivalries between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers led to "pork-barrel" projects that were often economically irrational but politically unstoppable. Narrative Style: Unlike many dry academic texts on water law, Reisner writes with the pace of a political thriller. He paints vivid portraits of the "water titans"—the ambitious, often ruthless men who redirected entire rivers to create empires in the desert. Predictive Power: Although originally published in 1986, the book's warnings about the inherent limits of desert growth and the eventual "drying up" of the West are more relevant today than ever, particularly regarding the shrinking levels of the Great Salt Lake and Lake Mead.
Stats for nerds
80recommend
137mentions
107people
2009–2026years
75% recommend24% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'm gonna plug a recommendation here based on your comment: if anyone wants to marvel or horrify at the US' water development history, Cadillac Desert is an excellent read, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert .
- I think the best intro to LA is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (it's really about the entire West and its relationship to water, but I think the first few chapters explain LA better than many other books.)
- When the West was settled it was widely believed that the act of building a town attracted rain. The 'atmosphere' of human buildings in an area would naturally attract and collect rain from the heavens. Many of the original methods used to estimate water, rainfall, and other essentials for human survival were wrong.
Most of them are catalogued in the outstanding Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - an excellent book with an outstanding audiobook too.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing...
- Do any of those books include 101 climate change or Cadillac Desert.
- Regarding the dams, I recommend the book "Cadillac Desert" to anyone even remotely curious about the background and scale of water projects in the US. It's not boring despite the what the subject matter might suggest.
- Excellent book, seconded.
Regarding buttons, or rather 'buttony' (which used to mean the craft of making buttons), the UK has many regions that have historical claims to being the former button capital of the world. First it was Dorset, thanks to the sheep, then Yorkshire stole that business, then the Black Country (Birmingham) brought the full weight of the Industrial Revolution to the product.
This American/German story is just one Johnny-come-lately part of the epic story that is button making, albeit without a 'Cadillac Desert' grade book to put the story together for you.
