Where things begin to get much more dark and ominous is when the book starts to discuss the dam building efforts of the 1930’s and the early work of the Bureau of Reclamation, which throughout this book appears more like the Bureau of Damnation with its subsidization of wealthy farmers, it’s complete disregard for authority or legality, and its large (and largely unknown) contribution to the massive debt burden of the United States.īy the time the book starts talking about the wholesale destruction of nearly every major and minor river system of the West, the environmentalist (latent or active) of the reader is likely to be furious. The book as a whole is ominous, starting with some serious reflection on the nature of the desert of the Western United States and the history of its early Mormon irrigation efforts and its early theft of water on a private or municipal scale. I will save the worst of the apocalypse scenarios for a future entry, after I sleep it off to make it less horrifying, but this book is horrifying enough. In fact, it provides so many horrifying apocalyptic scenarios and so much to infuriate someone like me, schooled in civil engineering and descended from farming families who never made a penny off of agricultural subsidies, that one scarcely knows where to begin. There is no nightmare worse than grim reality, and if you want grim reality about the not-distant-future of the United States, this weighty and damning book will provide more of it than most people would be willing to stomach.

This is the kind of book that people in the Western part of the United States should read at night, if they want to have apocalyptic nightmares.

Cadillac desert book review