Publisher Description
As breathtaking today as when it was completed, Hoover Dam ranks among America’s greatest achievements. The story of its conception, design, and construction is the story of the United States at a unique moment in history: when facing both a global economic crisis and the implacable elements of nature, we prevailed.
The United States after Hoover Dam was a different country from the one that began to build it, going from the glorification of individual effort to the value of shared enterprise and communal support. The dam became the physical embodiment of this change. A remote regional construction project transformed from a Republican afterthought into a New Deal symbol of national pride.
Hoover Dam went on to shape not only the American West but the American century. Michael Hiltzik populates the epic tale of the dam’s construction with larger-than-life characters, such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, William Mulholland, and the dam’s egomaniacal architect, Frank Crowe. Shedding real light on a one-of-a-kind moment in twentieth-century American history, Hiltzik combines exhaustive research, trenchant observation, and a gift for unforgettable storytelling in a book that is bound to become a classic in its genre.
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“This was a very fascinating look at one of the greatest building feats of the 20th century … the building of the Hoover Dam. I was a bit disappointed in the fact that the author did not spend as much time on the actual building of the dam … and the telling of the personal stories of workers. Instead, the author not only gives details about the actual building of the dam but gives a more detailed history of the politicking and wrangling over water rights and the bidding by construction companies for the building of this massive dam. It took years of planning and wrangling and politicking. The planning and building spanned at least three or four presidencies … with Franklin D. Roosevelt, somehow ending up taking credit for the Hoover Dam being one of the crowning achievements of his New Deal. The construction companies that partnered to build the dam did so in partnership also with the Federal Government … and this partnership ended up giving these companies near immunity from following any of states’ safe labor laws. This as well as the fact that thousands of American families were out of work due to the affects of The Great Depression, gave the big construction companies free reign to treat their workers as dispensable commodities in the building this collossal dam. They knew if their present work force quit working, there were PLENTY of Americans who would take their place… most workers were just thankful to have a job. In the end, the dam was built and continues to supply water and hydroelectric energy to much of the West. It was perhaps the single most important contributing factor to the explosion of development of the West in the early 20th century!”
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Ann (4 out of 5 stars)
