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Cadillac Desert, Revised and Updated Edition by Marc Reisner
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Cadillac Desert, Revised and Updated Edition

The American West and Its Disappearing Water

$20.99

Retail price: $29.95

Discount: 29%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Length 27 hours 58 minutes
Language English
Narrators Lawrie Mott, Francis J Spieler & Kate Udall

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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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 corruptions and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster. In 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 cityโ€™s growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the US Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West.

Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning exposรฉ and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of Edenโ€”an Eden that may be only a mirage.

Marc Reisner (1948โ€“2000) authored three books: Cadillac Desert, Game Wars, and A Dangerous Place.

Lawrie Mott is an environmental scientist working in Californiaโ€™s Bay Area.

Francis J Spieler is an actor and literary agent in New York.

Kate Udall is a stage, television, and film actress living in New Yorkโ€™s Hudson Valley.

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Reviews

โ€œThe definitive work on the Westโ€™s water crisis.โ€

โ€œA revealing, absorbing, often amusing and alarming report on where billions of [taxpayerโ€™s] dollars have goneโ€”and where a lot more are goingโ€ฆ[Reisner] has put the story together in trenchant form.โ€

โ€œCadillac Desert is timely and of national importance. Hurry up and read this book.โ€

โ€œMasterfulโ€ฆAmong the most influential environmental books published by an American since Silent Spring.โ€

โ€œEssential background reading for anyone who cares about the drought ravaging the West and the regionโ€™s prospects for changing course before it is too late.โ€

โ€œBeautifully written and meticulously researched.โ€

โ€œ[This] timely and important book should be required reading for all citizens.โ€

โ€œCadillac Desert describes serious, perhaps fatal threats to the miraculous desert civilization of the Westโ€ฆTake[s] effective aim at the vested interests that perpetuate unsound water resource development.โ€

โ€œWhen archaelogists from another planet sift through the bleached bones of our civilization, they may conclude that our temples were dams, says Reisner in this angry, exhaustive and gracefully written account of Americaโ€™s quest to turn the inhospitable, irredeemably dry West into a Garden of Edenโ€ฆNot the first book on the subject, but one of the best.โ€

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