This is a book about how well-intentioned Americans dammed up the Columbia, Great River of the West, fulfilling dreams of cheap electricity and gardens flourishing in the desert. It is also a narrative of exploitation: of Native Americans, of endangered salmon, of nuclear waste, and of a river - once wild - tamed to puddled remains. Harden's story is a journey of rediscovery. His home town, Moses Lake, Washington, once bone dry, could not have existed without gargantuan irrigation schemes.
A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Revised and Updated) [Book]