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Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century, by Michael Hiltzik
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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.
- Sales Rank: #469181 in Books
- Published on: 2010-06-01
- Released on: 2010-06-01
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.40" w x 6.25" l, 1.87 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 512 pages
- ISBN13: 9781416532163
- Condition: Used - Like New
- Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Bookmarks Magazine
Fittingly, noted the San Francisco Chronicle, the history of Hoover Dam is "just as roiling and dirty as the silt-laden Colorado." Critics felt that what could have been a dry, technical story of the creation of the dam became, in Hiltzik's hands, a fascinating social, political, and labor history. Although Hiltzik spares readers few engineering details, he also looks closely at key political compromises and issues and captures the colorful personalities of the main players. He also offers new insight into the tragic worker deaths. A few reviewers commented that the book doesn't live up to the promise of its subtitle; that quibble notwithstanding, Hoover Dam is a standout popular history.
From Booklist
For his history of a famous piece of infrastructure, Hiltzik selects one without compare. Decked out in art deco, the Hoover Dam is a beautiful immensity that awes throngs of visitors, and it boasts a construction epic reflecting Depression-era America: the first to impound the Colorado River, the dam is both product and symbol of the politics of water rights in the American West. It is the 1920s iteration of the latter on which Hiltzik, a business writer for the Los Angeles Times, embarks in his fascinating account of the genesis of the Boulder Canyon Project, as the enabling congressional act called the yet-unnamed dam. Starting the story at the torrid desert job site, Hiltzik recounts the rigorous organization of the project by the contract-winning consortium and its engineering chief, Frank Crowe. If Crowe's solutions to technical problems were audaciously titanic, the labor practices of his bosses were pitiless. Strikes were crushed; slack safety resulted in numerous deaths; and a whites-only hiring policy prevailed. Astutely conveying the characters of its creators, Hiltzik marvelously captures the times of the Hoover Dam. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
“Masterly. In the grand tradition of David McCullough. [Hiltzik] fixes the endeavor in its time and captures the personalities of the people involved. May inspire in readers a longing for something…that will summon up once again America's famous self-confidence and daring.”—John Steele Gordon, Wall Street Journal
“Hiltzik tells the dam's tale well, with majestic sweep and a degree of detail that by rights ought to be numbing, but isn't; every iota of material fits snugly into the narrative, which, unlike the river, flows freely.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“[COLOSSUS is a] detailed and vividly written study – destined to be the standard history for decades to come.” —Washington Post
“[A] superb new history of the dam's conception, construction and legacy… And in Hiltzik's hands, it makes very good history, indeed.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The parade of grim particulars might make Colossus a depressing read were it not for the vigor of Hiltzik's prose and the lively gallery of individual portraits and anecdotes that convey a wonderfully textured sense of what it was like to work on Hoover Dam.”—Los Angeles Times
"Fascinating. A construction epic..of a beautiful immensity, a piece of infrastructure without compare..reflecting Depression-era America [and] astutely conveying the characters of its creators. Hiltzik marvelously captures the times of the Hoover Dam." — Booklist
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Great story
By L. Humphrey
I really enjoyed this book. Well written and easy to read. I found out I was related to one of the characters mentioned early in the book!
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
The title says it all!
By Jim
This is a great read, though it is long and not what I would call a summer read.The book days a excellent job on the construction of Hoover/Boulder Dam, describing in great detail of the tough conditions the workers had to face, not only from the construction but also that of mother nature and the depression of the 30's.
A good amount of the book also goes into the history of the Colorado River as the U.S. spread westward. Also on the politics and egos of the men involved with the wonder of the Modern World.
Just like the title says, Hoover Dam is a Colossus and was instrumental in making the U.S. what it become in the 20Th century.
I highly recommend this book
Jim
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Where are the engineers?
By Camber
"Colossus" is a colossally long book. It goes into extensive and vivid detail in the following areas:
* The political and social context of the times, giving us a good sense of what life was like in America before and during the Great Depression
* The early visions for the project, based on a desire to tame the Colorado River's flooding, and use its water for agriculture and hydropower
* The political battles involved in making the project possible, including nearly failed negotiations over water rights among the affected Western states
* The business aspects of bidding and completing the project, including succeeding in extracting profit from every possible avenue
* The extremely difficult, and sometimes fatal, working and living conditions of the laborers who built the dam and their families, including life in Boulder City
To my surprise, the book falls short in describing the construction of the dam itself. Of course, information on construction is provided, but not nearly as much as I think is needed and appropriate for a book of this length.
But even more egregious, there's almost no information on the engineering design of the project. The author almost makes it sound like the design of Hoover Dam was a minor task which was completed quickly, with the real "engineering" of the project being completed during construction. As an award-winning dam engineer myself, I can assure you that this is completely false and misleading. The design of the dam was a huge and vital undertaking, at least as important as every other aspect of the project, and I suspect that the author neglected to describe it adequately simply because he lacked the technical background to do so. It's rather unfortunate to see a book written about a landmark engineering achievement which hardly talks about the engineering!
I won't go as far not recommending the book, but beware that it's very incomplete and unbalanced.
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