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When Henry David Thoreau went for his daily walk, he would consult his instincts on which direction to follow. More often than not his inner compass pointed west or southwest. "The future lies that way to me," he explained, "and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side." In his own imaginative way, Thoreau was imitating the countless young pioneers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs who were zealously following Horace Greeley's famous advice to "go west." Yet while the epic chapter in American history opened by these adventurous men and women is filled with stories of frontier hardship, we rarely think of one of their greatest problems--the lack of water resources. And the same difficulty that made life so troublesome for early settlers remains one of the most pressing concerns in the western states of the late-twentieth century.
The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality.
Rivers of Empire represents a radically new vision of the American West and its historical significance. Showing how ecological change is inextricably intertwined with social evolution, and reevaluating the old mythic and celebratory approach to the development of the West, Worster offers the most probing, critical analysis of the region to date. He shows how the vast region encompassing our western states, while founded essentially as colonies, have since become the true seat of the American "Empire." How this imperial West rose out of desert, how it altered the course of nature there, and what it has meant for Thoreau's (and our own) mythic search for freedom and the American Dream, are the central themes of this eloquent and thought-provoking story--a story that begins and ends with water.
- Sales Rank: #321359 in Books
- Published on: 1992-06-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.13" h x 1.08" w x 9.25" l, 1.29 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Features
- water aridity growth american west
Review
"Classic."--New Internationalist
"Extremely wonderful and well-written."--Thomas G. Alexander, Brigham Young University
"Worster is an eloquent, often passionate historian....This important book, sure to be furiously debated, is a history of the West in terms of its most essential resource, water....It examines how manipulation of water has combined with frontier myths, expectations, and illusions, some of them carefully cultivated by interested parties, to create the ambiguous modern West."--Wallace Stegner
"Worster is capable of making the most prosaic facts come alive through his mastery of the language, his imagery, and his ability to weave his ideas with events and personalities into a fascinating historical record."--The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Many readers will disagree with [Worster's] conclusions, but they are so forcefully presented that they cannot be dismissed, and will likely shape the discussions for years to come....A language of exceptional poetry and power....He takes his place in a tradition of awed affectionate writing about the West that includes John Muir and Edward Abbey, Bernard De Voto and Wallace Stegner. That is distinguished company indeed, and Donald Worster stands tall in it."--The New York Times Book Review
"A brilliant book, clear in its argument, exceptional in its literary qualities."--The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Impassioned and lyrical."--The New York Times Book Review
"An excellent choice for courses that include readings from the New Western History interpretations."--Thomas L. Charlton, Baylor University
About the Author
Donald Worster, who won the Bancroft Prize for his book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas. He is also the author of The Ends of the Earth, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, and the forthcoming Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West.
Most helpful customer reviews
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
A Cautionary Tale of Water: Intriguing, Readable, Important
By Billy D.
Donald Worster's "Rivers of Empire" is a superb work by the environmental historian, though his critique of California's "hydraulic society" is more a social history. Worster chronicles the exploits of the agribusinessmen and engineers who financed and built the system of damns, reservoirs, and canals which transformed the American West from a sparsely inhabited desert to the site of massive fertile farms and sprawling urban metropolises. Worster argues that the control of scarce water resources gave rise to a symbiotic capitalist/bureaucratic elite and to a modern day empire like its ancient predecessors on the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Huang Ho. This imperial elite, in turn, established and perpetuated itself on the backs of impoverished wage laborers usually of minority or immigrant descent. As an environmentalist, he rails against the wanton waste of water for swimming pools, casino fountains, and ill-suited crops like alfalfa, the depletion of aquifers, and the salinization of rivers - all byproducts of the US government's ambitious 20th century reclamation projects. Worster points out the vengeance of nature in the form of the sedimentation and collapse of dozens of dams. He suggests that these processes and events presage the decay of a socio-economic system which long ago forsook the more harmonious ideals of agrarianism and democracy. This doomsday prediction and Worster's idealistic alternatives are a bit hard to stomach. Also, for all of Worster's sympathy for the underclass of farm laborers, this group never emerges as a real actor in his story. Rather, this is a history of great men, albeit a critical one. Nevertheless, Worster writes with passion; his narrative is fascinating and his contentions are compelling. The book is a fine counterpoint for fans of Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert," and an extremely worthwhile read on its own.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Wow! A Must Read, a Pathbreaking Analysis!
By Roger D. Launius
I can count on two hands the number of truly pathbreaking works of history published since 1980. "Rivers of Empire" is one of them, and must reading for anyone who seeks to understand the history of this critical region of the United States.
Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, has been producing outstanding history of the American West and environmentalism for more than a quarter century. When the so-called "New Western History" was avant-garde in historian circles in the early 1980s he was dubbed one of the "Gang of Four" who transformed the field of study--the others being Patricia Nelson Limerick, William Cronen, and Richard White. Worster's work, as well as that of the other three historians, was indeed pathbreaking, and "Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West" is by far his most influential publication. It demonstrates well why Worster was one of the "Gang of Four."
In "Rivers of Empire" Worster argues that the core reality of the American West is its aridity. To make it suitable for large-scale human habitation required the complete transformation of the region; Americans harnessed the rivers and brought water there, irrigating the land and creating great cities. As Worster writes, "The ecological and social transformation of the Great Valley is one of the most spectacular, and more revealing episodes of the American West" (p. 11). The organization and structure of every institution associated with the West reflected the need to control the environment. It brought profound changes to both the region and the people who lived there. This is the story that he tells in this superb book.
Ironically, the supposed individualistic and democratic westerners willingly conspired with the government to create a hydraulic civilization under the suzerainty of the federal government. In order to flourish in the arid West Americans had to build an agricultural system that was dependent upon large-scale government-managed waterworks--productive (for irrigation) and protective (for flood control). This not only made the West habitable, it brought urbanization and wealth there as well. Ancient Egypt first engaged in this type of civilization, and became a dominant power in the process. But always, there were winners and losers in this situation and those left out harped on the inequities of the system. In the American West the "Sagebrush Revolution" of the latter twentieth century pitted the presumably individualist West against the organization and power of the federal government. Ironically, the very organization and power that had created the modern American West was under attack from those who had so benefited from it.
Worster notes that the dominant myth of the West needs to be replaced with a more realistic understanding. He asserts that it is best understood as a story "of people encountering difficult environments, of driving to overcome them through technological means, of creating the necessary social organization to do so, of leading on and on to indigenous bureaucracy and corporatism" (p. 11). He is so right.
This is a wonderful book. Don't miss it!
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
essential reading on the West
By isaac
'Rivers' presents an extensive yet accessible history of Western development based on the author's unique 'hydraulic' thesis -- a hybrid framework that adds an environmental dimension to traditional socio-economic analysis. Essentially, the idea is that the relationship between humans and environment dictates social structure. Whether or not one buys the theory on the strength of this book alone is beside the point. The importance of 'Rivers' lies in its singular, alternative perspective that, when combined with others, reconstructs a more complete story of the West. With that understanding, the reader may appreciate this work without being bothered by its occasional lapses into the kind of flat ideological analysis that seems inevitable in social histories like this.
'Rivers' offers a number of invaluable insights. Contrary to the idealized vision of the West as the last hope for freedom and democracy, the West birthed a rigid, hierarchical society combining big capitalism with big government. Yet the reason behind this was not the environmental condition of aridity per se, but the romantic capitalistic notion of the desert as something to be subdued and exploited. On an even broader level, therefore, 'Rivers' begins to shed light on the dynamic interplay between the relationship between human and nature and the relationship between humans themselves. In the end, this work's highest value may lie in its contribution to the development of this critical but still largely ignored point.
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