Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (INSCRIBED) by Reisner, Marc - 1986

New York: Viking Press, 1986. First Edition. INSCRIBED by the author on half-title page. Large 8vo. 582 pp. Bibliography; Index. Photo-reproductions. A fine copy of an important work on the origins and disappearing water in the Western United States. A social history of the politics of water in the United States and the environmental destruction wreaked by dams. "Cadillac Desert details the powerful and sometimes baleful influence the Bureau of Reclamation has had on the West - pushing it inexorably toward an edge from which, sooner or later, it is bound to fall off. A long book, packed with facts, Cadillac Desert is not going to be bedside reading for the millions; but millions ought to read it, because in its pages is visible the shape of a future that we have stubbornly refused to foresee." - Wallace Stegner. The book is on the Modern Library list of the 100 most important non-fiction books of the twentieth century.