A review by kmichelle92
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition by Marc Reisner

5.0

I think this book touched on something I’ve felt quite strongly in the last decade or so about “desolate” “barren” “ugly” environments. I’ve long felt an affinity for such places, and even seen beauty in them personally. An argument to build a dam in Alaska because a swamp was ugly and useless (when the dam would have held zero value and done nothing but satisfy the egos of the Bureau of Reclamation or U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers), despite the reality that the swamp held immeasurable value for the wildlife that lived there and humans living nearby. I think being from Arizona and growing up hearing people dismiss it as awful, hot, ugly and “worthless” has bothered me more as time has gone on because environments have value whether you want to live there or not, whether you find it beautiful or not. This attitude (I believe) is also responsible for reckless development, the continual suggestion to build something like a shopping mall at/near the Grand Canyon, the development of microchip processing plants that use incredible amounts of valuable and limited water.