Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Download Americas Greatest Dam full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Americas Greatest Dam ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Author : William Benjamin West
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 86 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book America's Greatest Dam, Muscle Shoals, Alabama written by William Benjamin West and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : William Benjamin West
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (126 download)
Download or read book America's Greatest Dam written by William Benjamin West and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781505372779
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (727 download)
Download or read book The Hoover Dam written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-12 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the project written by workers and their family members *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "This morning I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind...Ten years ago the place where we gathered was an unpeopled, forbidding desert. In the bottom of the gloomy canyon whose precipitous walls rose to height of more than a thousand feet, flowed a turbulent, dangerous river...The site of Boulder City was a cactus-covered waste. And the transformation wrought here in these years is a twentieth century marvel." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 30, 1935 During the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, thousands of workers began work on the Hoover Dam, built in the Black Canyon, which had been cut by the powerful Colorado River. The Colorado River was responsible for the Grand Canyon, and by the 20th century, the idea of damming the river and creating an artificial lake was being explored for all of its potential, including hydroelectric power and irrigation. By the time the project was proposed in the 1920s, the contractors vowing to build it were facing the challenge of building the largest dam the world had ever known. As if that wasn't enough, the landscape was completely unforgiving, as described by the famous explorer John Wesley Powell generations earlier: "The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock--cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock--ten thousand strangely carved forms...cathedral shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast hollow domes and tall pinnacles and shafts set on the verge overhead; and all highly colored." The engineering that went into the Hoover Dam was not just dangerous but unprecedented, to the extent that the Hoover Dam relied on building methods that had never been proven effective on such a giant scale. The project also had to employ tens of thousands of people in often dangerous working conditions, which resulted in scores of deaths. At the same time, however, the large number of men that traveled to work on the project helped turn Las Vegas, a nearby small desert town in Nevada, into Sin City. Despite all the difficulties, the Hoover Dam was completed on time, and President Roosevelt summed up just how impressive the accomplishment was in his speech dedicating the site in 1935: "We are here to celebrate the completion of the greatest dam in the world, rising 726 feet above the bedrock of the river and altering the geography of a whole region: we are here to see the creation of the largest artificial lake in the world-115 miles long, holding enough water, for example, to cover the whole State of Connecticut to a depth of ten feet; and we are here to see nearing completion a power house which will contain the largest generators and turbines yet installed in this country, machinery that can continuously supply nearly two million horsepower of electric energy." The Hoover Dam: The History and Construction of America's Most Famous Engineering Project chronicles the construction of America's most famous dam. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Hoover Dam like never before, in no time at all.
Author : Michael Hiltzik
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439181586
Total Pages : 805 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)
Download or read book Colossus written by Michael Hiltzik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-20 with total page 805 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As breathtaking today as the day it was completed, Hoover Dam not only shaped the American West but helped launch the American century. In the depths of the Great Depression it became a symbol of American resilience and ingenuity in the face of crisis, putting thousands of men to work in a remote desert canyon and bringing unruly nature to heel. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Michael Hiltzik uses the saga of the dam’s conception, design, and construction to tell the broader story of America’s efforts to come to grips with titanic social, economic, and natural forces. For embodied in the dam’s striking machine-age form is the fundamental transformation the Depression wrought in the nation’s very culture—the shift from the concept of rugged individualism rooted in the frontier days of the nineteenth century to the principle of shared enterprise and communal support that would build the America we know today. In the process, the unprecedented effort to corral the raging Colorado River evolved from a regional construction project launched by a Republican president into the New Deal’s outstanding—and enduring—symbol of national pride. Yet the story of Hoover Dam has a darker side. Its construction was a gargantuan engineering feat achieved at great human cost, its progress marred by the abuse of a desperate labor force. The water and power it made available spurred the development of such great western metropolises as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and San Diego, but the vision of unlimited growth held dear by its designers and builders is fast turning into a mirage. In Hiltzik’s hands, the players in this epic historical tale spring vividly to life: President Theodore Roosevelt, who conceived the project; William Mulholland, Southern California’s great builder of water works, who urged the dam upon a reluctant Congress; Herbert Hoover, who gave the dam his name though he initially opposed its construction; Frank Crowe, the dam’s renowned master builder, who pushed his men mercilessly to raise the beautiful concrete rampart in an inhospitable desert gorge. Finally there is Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the ultimate completion of the project and claimed the credit for it. Hiltzik combines exhaustive research, trenchant observation, and unforgettable storytelling to shed new light on a major turning point of twentieth-century history.
Author : David P. Billington
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806157887
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)
Download or read book Big Dams of the New Deal Era written by David P. Billington and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massive dams of the American West were designed to serve multiple purposes: improving navigation, irrigating crops, storing water, controlling floods, and generating hydroelectricity. Their construction also put thousands of people to work during the Great Depression. Only later did the dams’ baneful effects on river ecologies spark public debate. Big Dams of the New Deal Era tells how major water-storage structures were erected in four western river basins. David P. Billington and Donald C. Jackson reveal how engineering science, regional and national politics, perceived public needs, and a river’s natural features intertwined to create distinctive dams within each region. In particular, the authors describe how two federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, became key players in the creation of these important public works. By illuminating the mathematical analysis that supported large-scale dam construction, the authors also describe how and why engineers in the 1930s most often opted for massive gravity dams, whose design required enormous quantities of concrete or earth-rock fill for stability. Richly illustrated, Big Dams of the New Deal Era offers a compelling account of how major dams in the New Deal era restructured the landscape—both politically and physically—and why American society in the 1930s embraced them wholeheartedly.
Author : Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781979653367
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (533 download)
Download or read book Americas Greatest Engineering Projects written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the projects' construction *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading The Transcontinental Railroad, laid across the United States during the 1860s, remains the very epitome of contradiction. On the one hand, it was a triumph of engineering skills over thousands of miles of rough terrain, but on the other hand, it drained the natural resources in those places nearly dry. It "civilized" the American West by making it easier for women and children to travel there, but it dispossessed Native American civilizations that had lived there for generations. It made the careers of many men and destroyed the lives from many others. It was bold and careless, ingenious and cruel, gentle and violent, and it enriched some and bankrupted others. In short, it was the best and worst of 19th century America in action. Of course, even once a route was chosen, the backbreaking work itself had to be done to connect railroad lines across the span of nearly 2,000 miles. This required an incredible amount of manpower, often consisting of unskilled laborers engaging in dangerous work, and the financial resources poured into it were also extreme. In a world where few natural rivers carved out over eons of time have reached a length of more than 50 miles, the idea that a group of men could carve a canal of that length seemed impossible. In fact, many thought it could not be done. On the other hand, there was a tremendous motivation to try, because if a canal could be successfully cut across Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, it would cut weeks off the time necessary to carry goods by sea from the well-established East Coast of the United States to the burgeoning West Coast. Moreover, traveling around the tip of South America was fraught with danger, and European explorers and settlers had proposed building a canal in Panama or Nicaragua several centuries before the Panama Canal was actually built. Building the Panama Canal was a herculean task in every sense. Taking about 10 years to build, workers had to excavate millions of cubic yards of earth and fight off hordes of insects to make Roosevelt's vision a reality. Roosevelt also had to tie up the U.S. Navy in a revolt in Colombia to ensure Panama could become independent and thus ensure America had control of the canal. During the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, thousands of workers began work on the Hoover Dam, built in the Black Canyon, which had been cut by the powerful Colorado River. The Colorado River was responsible for the Grand Canyon, and by the 20th century, the idea of damming the river and creating an artificial lake was being explored for all of its potential, including hydroelectric power and irrigation. By the time the project was proposed in the 1920s, the contractors vowing to build it were facing the challenge of building the largest dam the world had ever known. As if that wasn't enough, the landscape was completely unforgiving. The engineering that went into the Hoover Dam was not just dangerous but unprecedented, to the extent that the Hoover Dam relied on building methods that had never been proven effective on such a giant scale. The project also had to employ tens of thousands of people in often dangerous working conditions, which resulted in scores of deaths. At the same time, however, the large number of men that traveled to work on the project helped turn Las Vegas, a nearby small desert town in Nevada, into Sin City. America's Greatest Engineering Projects: The Construction History of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal, and the Hoover Dam chronicles the construction of each major project, and their subsequent history. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Transcontinental Railroad, Panama Canal, and Hoover Dam like never before.
Author : Joseph E. Stevens
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806173971
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)
Download or read book Hoover Dam written by Joseph E. Stevens and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1931, in a rugged desert canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, an army of workmen began one of the most difficult and daring building projects ever undertaken—the construction of Hoover Dam. Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West. Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life. Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor. Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure. Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.
Author : Andrew J. Dunar
Publisher : University of Nevada Press
ISBN 13 : 0874173833
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (741 download)
Download or read book Building Hoover Dam written by Andrew J. Dunar and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride skillfully interweave eyewitness accounts of the building of Hoover Dam. These stories create the richest existing portrait of the building of Hoover Dam and its tremendous effect on the lives of those involved in its creation: the gritty, sometimes grisly realities of living in cardboard boxes and tents during several of the hottest Southern Nevada summers on record; the fearsome carbon monoxide deaths of tunnel builders who, it was claimed, had died of "pneumonia"; the uproarious life of nearby Las Vegas versus the tightly controlled existence of the workers in the built-overnight confines of Boulder City; and of course the astounding accomplishment of building the Dam itself and completing the task not only early but under budget!
Author : John Nichols
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780738520797
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (27 download)
Download or read book St. Francis Dam Disaster written by John Nichols and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minutes before midnight on the evening of March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed. The dam's 200-foot concrete wall crumpled, sending billions of gallons of raging flood waters down San Francisquito Canyon, sweeping 54 miles down the Santa Clara River to the sea, and claiming over 450 lives in the disaster. Captured here in over 200 images is a photographic record of the devastation caused by the flood, and the heroic efforts of residents and rescue workers. Built by the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Water Works and Supply, the failure of the St. Francis Dam on its first filling was the greatest American civil engineering failure of the 20th century. Beginning at dawn on the morning after the disaster, stunned local residents picked up their cameras to record the path of destruction, and professional photographers moved in to take images of the washed-out bridges, destroyed homes and buildings, Red Cross workers giving aid, and the massive clean-up that followed. The event was one of the worst disasters in California's history, second only to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
Author : Andrew J. Dunar
Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)
Download or read book Building Hoover Dam written by Andrew J. Dunar and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Built between 1931 and 1936, Hoover Dam stands as a magnificent tribute to the indomitable will, spirit, and resourcefulness of the American people during the years of the Great Depression. The dramatic story of this great public works endeavor - which put thousands of Americans back to work and resulted in one of the largest dams in the world - embodies hope, danger, politics, adventure, struggle, humor, determination, and inspiration. And while other books have chronicled the dam's construction, until now none has done so in the words of the workers themselves." "Building Hoover Dam represents oral history at its finest. Drawing on priceless archival material, as well as interviews conducted expressly for this volume, editors Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride present a stirring eyewitness account of the dam workers' experience. The chapters - framed by instructive introductory and concluding sections - document the workers' stories in a chronological and thematic fashion; in their own words the men, women, and children who participated in this monumental undertaking speak of everything from setting up tent-homes along the Colorado River to hauling 30-foot pipes over primitive roads with hairpin turns, from establishing schools and churches on a "government reservation" to attending the 1935 dedication ceremony at which Franklin Roosevelt spoke. Their stories are by turn humorous and tragic, gripping and triumphant, touching and courageous. Skillfully interweaving background information to clarify and set the testimony in context, the editors make complex, sometimes technical material readily understandable to readers; they also address forthrightly such issues as racial discrimination, women's roles, the "Boulder" vs. "Hoover" Dam naming controversy, and Boulder City residents' divisiveness over remaining part of the government or incorporating as an independent town." "Augmenting the volume are over 60 illustrations and a trio of appendixes that detail workers' terminology, FDR's dedication address, and the individuals who lost their lives during the dam's construction. A fascinating, moving account of a major achievement in our nation's history, Building Hoover Dam holds significant appeal for citizens today pulling together with a sense of national renewal."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author : Michael Hiltzik
Publisher : Free Press
ISBN 13 : 9781416532163
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (321 download)
Download or read book Colossus written by Michael Hiltzik and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As breathtaking today as the day it was completed, Hoover Dam not only shaped the American West but helped launch the American century. In the depths of the Great Depression it became a symbol of American resilience and ingenuity in the face of crisis, putting thousands of men to work in a remote desert canyon and bringing unruly nature to heel. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Michael Hiltzik uses the saga of the dam’s conception, design, and construction to tell the broader story of America’s efforts to come to grips with titanic social, economic, and natural forces. For embodied in the dam’s striking machine-age form is the fundamental transformation the Depression wrought in the nation’s very culture—the shift from the concept of rugged individualism rooted in the frontier days of the nineteenth century to the principle of shared enterprise and communal support that would build the America we know today. In the process, the unprecedented effort to corral the raging Colorado River evolved from a regional construction project launched by a Republican president into the New Deal’s outstanding—and enduring—symbol of national pride. Yet the story of Hoover Dam has a darker side. Its construction was a gargantuan engineering feat achieved at great human cost, its progress marred by the abuse of a desperate labor force. The water and power it made available spurred the development of such great western metropolises as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and San Diego, but the vision of unlimited growth held dear by its designers and builders is fast turning into a mirage. In Hiltzik’s hands, the players in this epic historical tale spring vividly to life: President Theodore Roosevelt, who conceived the project; William Mulholland, Southern California’s great builder of water works, who urged the dam upon a reluctant Congress; Herbert Hoover, who gave the dam his name though he initially opposed its construction; Frank Crowe, the dam’s renowned master builder, who pushed his men mercilessly to raise the beautiful concrete rampart in an inhospitable desert gorge. Finally there is Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the ultimate completion of the project and claimed the credit for it. Hiltzik combines exhaustive research, trenchant observation, and unforgettable storytelling to shed new light on a major turning point of twentieth-century history.
Author : Rebecca Stefoff
Publisher : Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1502629682
Total Pages : 34 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (26 download)
Download or read book Building the Hoover Dam written by Rebecca Stefoff and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hoover Dam is called one of American's seven modern civil engineering wonders. Hurdles to clear included building access roads, diverting the Colorado River, and creating a way to cure massive amounts of concrete quickly enough to complete the project on time. Readers will learn how what was then the world's tallest dam was built in a region that presented challenges in geography and weather.
Author : Robert W. Righter
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195149475
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)
Download or read book The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy written by Robert W. Righter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-17 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Author : Al M. Rocca
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book America's Master Dam Builder written by Al M. Rocca and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Master Dam Builder is a sweeping biographical epic of Frank T. Crowe. Author Al M. Rocca presents a fascinating story that covers the engineering challenges and triumphs Crowe encountered, from his earliest days with the United States Reclamation Service to his phenomenal conquests of Hoover, Parker and Shasta Dams. Rocca shows how one man rose to the top of the engineering world and supplied the drive and innovation that permitted the construction of large concrete dams, dams of unprecedented size, dams that would transform the American West.
Author : Donald C. Jackson
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822978598
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)
Download or read book Pastoral and Monumental written by Donald C. Jackson and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pastoral and Monumental, Donald C. Jackson chronicles America's longtime fascination with dams as represented on picture postcards from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through over four hundred images, Jackson documents the remarkable transformation of dams and their significance to the environment and culture of America. Initially, dams were portrayed in pastoral settings on postcards that might jokingly proclaim them as "a dam pretty place." But scenes of flood damage, dam collapses, and other disasters also captured people's attention. Later, images of New Deal projects, such as the Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and Norris Dam, symbolized America's rise from the Great Depression through monumental public works and technological innovation. Jackson relates the practical applications of dams, describing their use in irrigation, navigation, flood control, hydroelectric power, milling, mining, and manufacturing. He chronicles changing construction techniques, from small timber mill dams to those more massive and more critical to a society dependent on instant access to electricity and potable water. Concurrent to the evolution of dam technology, Jackson recounts the rise of a postcard culture that was fueled by advances in printing, photography, lowered postal rates, and America's fascination with visual imagery. In 1910, almost one billion postcards were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, and for a period of over fifty years, postcards featuring dams were "all the rage." Whether displaying the charms of an old mill, the aftermath of a devastating flood, or the construction of a colossal gravity dam, these postcards were a testament to how people perceived dams as structures of both beauty and technological power.
Author : John Hallwas
Publisher : Arcadia Library Editions
ISBN 13 : 9781531604646
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)
Download or read book Keokuk and the Great Dam written by John Hallwas and published by Arcadia Library Editions. This book was released on 2001-04 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable pictorial history tells the story of an engineering marvel: the first dam built across the Mississippi River (from 1910-1913), and the historic Midwestern community that fostered the world-famous hydroelectric project. Keokuk and the Great Dam is the story of a colorful and historic river town with a dream of economic development and cultural progress; a self-taught engineer who took on a challenge that no one else wanted to attempt; and a massive construction effort that pitted men and machines against the awesome power of America's greatest river. Completed shortly before WWI, the Keokuk dam (now known as Lock and Dam No. 19) was the culmination of a long struggle to employ the Mississippi River for hydroelectric power and to improve navigation on the great waterway. In frontier days the Des Moines Rapids, stretching north from Keokuk, prevented loaded steamboats from moving upriver. They also created a business opportunity for local residents. A rapidly growing town by the 1850s, Keokuk went into decline for many years when it failed to secure adequate railroad connections. But the coming of hydroelectric power fostered a new dream, and local leaders set out to harness the great river. What followed was a dramatic effort that drew international attention, produced the world's second largest dam (at the time), and forever changed both the community and the fabled American waterway.
Author : Anthony R. Palumbi
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1640125876
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (41 download)
Download or read book At the Base of the Giant's Throat written by Anthony R. Palumbi and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are ninety thousand registered dams in the United States, fifty thousand of them classified as "major." Nearly all of this infrastructure was built during a forty-year period, from 1932 to 1972, in an era of public investment and political consensus that seems inconceivable today. These incredible structures--sometimes called the American Pyramids--helped the country rebound from the Great Depression, brought water and electricity to enormous reaches, helped win World War II for the Allies, and became the basis for decades of prosperous stability. At the Base of the Giant's Throat dives into the history of dam-building in the United States as natural waterscapes have been replaced with engineered environments and the bone-dry West became America's produce aisle. From the Folsom Powerhouse cranking sixty-hertz alternating current in the 1890s to the iconic Hoover Dam and the gargantuan Grand Coulee Dam, Anthony R. Palumbi lays out how dams and water projects changed the North American continent forever and laid the groundwork for an age of unprecedented prosperity. He also describes how institutional complacency corrupted the ethos of public power and public works--and how the influence of rich landowners undermined the credibility of that ethos. Palumbi shows how our nation's ability to cope with natural disasters has been fatally compromised by underinvestment in decaying infrastructure. He argues that a livable future demands investment on a scale few Americans currently grasp. To win that future we must interrogate the history of our most vital public works: the dams, canals, and levees helping to channel life's most precious molecule. At the Base of the Giant's Throat tells the story of America through its water, sweeping across five hundred years of history, from the swashbuckling exploits of French colonist Samuel de Champlain to the nightmarish urban flooding of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.
