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A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia | 
 enlarge | Author: Blaine Harden
Publisher: W. W. Norton Company
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 251686
Media: Paperback
Pages: 271
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0393316904
Dewey Decimal Number: 551
EAN: 9780393316902
ASIN: 0393316904
Publication Date: November 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
A century ago the place where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean was a violent cauldron of churning water, all but unnavigable. But the mighty river was tamed by the building of a series of dams, including the colossal Grand Coulee, to provide cheap hydroelectric power and irrigation water. Farms bloomed in the desert; nuclear reactors mushroomed on the river bank. Today barges ply the river, and Lewiston, Idaho, is an inland port. But the negative aspects of human impact are also apparent--the depletion of salmon stocks and the destruction of Native American cultures dependent on the salmon. Washington Post journalist Harden, a Northwest native, returns to examine the changes man has wrought. Harden's enthralling account is balanced and thorough.
Product Description
"A River Lost is superbly reported and written with clarity, insight, and great skill". -- Washington Post Book World "Harden's bold and well-supported commentary is a welcome addition to the literature of the majestic river". -- Kirkus Reviews After a two-decade absence, Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden returned to his small-town birthplace in the Pacific Northwest to follow the rise and fall of the West's most thoroughly conquered river. Harden's hometown, Moses Lake, Washington, could not have existed without massive irrigation schemes. His father, a Depression migrant trained as a welder, helped build dams and later worked at the secret Hanford plutonium plant. Now he and his neighbors, once considered patriots, stand accused of killing the river. As Blaine Harden traveled the Columbia -- by barge, car, and sometimes on foot -- his past seemed both foreign and familiar. A personal narrative of rediscovery joined a narrative of exploitation: of Native Americans, of endangered salmon, of nuclear waste, and of a once-wild river now tamed to puddled remains. -- Part history, part memoir, part lament",this is a brave and precise book", according to the Mew York Times Book Review".It must not have been easy for Blaine Harden to fine himself turning his journalistic weapons against his own heritage, but he has done the conscience of his homeland a great service".
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 The River Doesn't Run Through It Anymore March 17, 2005
C. Ryan (Winthrop, WA United States)
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
This journalistic narrative, written when Blain Harden returned to his Columbia River Basin hometown during a mid-1990s sabbatical from the Washington Post, summarizes the history of the massive U.S. Government funded hydroelectric, irrigation and nuclear energy development of the Columbia River system in eastern Washington and adjacent parts of Idaho and Oregon. Harden's approach is a well crafted, articulate chronology of events interspersed among interviews with then-still-living civil engineers and workers who built the dams (including the author's father), self-described redneck barge crews, American Indians, irrigator farmers, nuclear engineers, supposed "downwind" victims of nuclear engineers, wildlife management officials and environmental activists. Oddly, he never interviews any significant politician, and he describes the actions of civil service engineers and bureaucrats as if they built this multi-billion dollar project over forty years on their own fanatic authority, sort of like renegade CIA agents supposedly taking over a jungle-clad third world country without anyone telling them to. br / br /The gist of A River Lost is that beginning in 1933 and ending in the 1970s, Federal and quasi-Federal agencies, acting under the direction of six presidents, converted one of the world's largest and wildest rivers into an all-but-completely tamed series of lakes behind hydroelectric dams. The result is a massive amount of inexpensive electricity, irrigation for more than 500,000 acres of farmland, an economical means to transport commodities from an interior desert toward Asian markets and, totally unplanned by its originators, a means to produce plutonium for atomic bombs that ended World War II and armed the U.S. in the Cold War. The most negative side effect was the virtual destruction of the Columbia's unimaginably immense migrating salmon population along with a traumatically negative impact on remnant groups of American Indians dependent on the salmon for sustenance and culture. br / br /Harden makes a pretty good case that farmers and industries who benefited from the Columbia River industrialization only repaid a small fraction of the cost, Indians were not consulted, respected or compensated, billions of dollars were lost on an ill-conceived nuclear power project and there's been a lot of environmental damage, primarily to salmon and other fish populations, as well as possible damage to human health. As unpleasant as it may be for some of the "bad guys" in this saga to acknowledge I think the basic story is accurate. But as for Harden's expose of unfairness, corruption, self dealing and unforeseen or unconsidered negative impacts... and from a government program!... how shocking! br / br /Well, not really. A similar narrative could be constructed about virtually every large-scale government economic development and social engineering project since the 1930s: other river development schemes, so-called urban renewal, interstate highways, War on Poverty, public education system, etc., etc., etc. All of those programs have winners, losers and, typically, unintended, unacknowledged or uncompensated environmental, health or social costs. Such is the nature of government programs, but nobody seems able to resist them. br / br /To me the most interesting aspect of this book is how Harden characterizes, or declines to characterize, the political affiliation of key players. br / br /The initial Grande Coulee project and its unthinking destruction of salmon runs and Indian culture in the name of New Deal progress, and later the atomic city at Hanford, all occurred under President Franklin Roosevelt. Harden tells us that after WWII the remainder of the dam building, salmon and Indian destruction, sweetheart deals for farmers, barge operators, electrical utilities, et al, were driven through Congress, no matter who was president, by two powerful Washington senators, Magnuson and Jackson. The two senators were each in office about 40 years, and Harden refers to them ten times, asserting they abetted much sweetheart dealing, environmental damage and so forth. But Harden doesn't identify Roosevelt, Magnuson or Jackson as Democrats. br / br /Then, with all the dams built, all the subsidies enshrined, all the salmon dying and Magnuson and Jackson gone from the scene, an environmentalist-led "Salmon War" heats up in the early 1980s. That's when newly elected Washington Senator Gorton appears in the same paragraph where Harden refers to "evil... political games" and - finally! - Harden fearlessly dares put a name to regressive forces that refuse to right wrongs wrought by half a century of dam, irrigation and atomic energy programs. We learn Senator Gorton is a... a... a... Republican!!!!! And when Gorton reappears in the story Harden tells us once again, in case we missed it, that Gorton is (still!) a Republican. br / br /Things get worse again for salmon because, as Harden tells it, a mean Republican is elected to replace a nice Democrat as governor of neighboring Idaho. Apparently it's no problem, because its unmentioned by Harden, that Democrats almost always governed much larger Washington where most of the salmon's problem is located. Anyway, we learn that although Democrats controlled congress for about 56 of the first 60 years of the Columbia River development things only become hopeless for the fish when, just before Harden completes the book, Republicans take control of Congress in 1994. Did I mention Harden is a Washington Post reporter? br / br /My own postscript is that in the ten years since Harden wrote A River Lost irrigators' fortunes declined as foreign producers undercut even their subsidized costs. The aluminum industry imploded. Communities Harden characterizes as terminally whitebread are increasingly dominated by Mexican immigrants. The Colville Indians who lost prime fishing grounds to Grand Coulee Dam now benefit from its cheap electricity because they own the largest lumber processing mill in Okanogan County as well as three well-lit casinos in the Columbia Basin. And some Eastern Washington counties now spend more on fish habitat restoration than human health care. br / br /A River Lost has excellent sketch maps throughout each section that help place people and events. There are nine pages of footnotes and sources and thirteen pages of index. But as far as I can tell there's no mention to which political party Franklin Roosevelt, the guy who started the whole thing, belonged. br / br /
 So much good information October 10, 2003
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
A full and complete modern history of the Columbia River. At times sad, always intriging. Harden has done an excellent job of combining interviews with research that makes an excellent read.pHighly recommmended.
Wonderful writing. Interesting points of view. April 6, 2002
Frank Mclaughlin (Herndon, VA USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Once in a great while a book comes along that is so beautifully written, with stories so well told, that the subject matter seems secondary to the writer's ability to sustain interest. For me, with little interest in the northwest (I've been there twice), this was such a book. It is from Harden's exceptional skill as a writer and narrator of stories that the Columbia River suddenly became of great interest as I turned his pages. p"A River Lost" tells the story and history of the Columbia River and the environmental, economic and aesthetic impact of daming that river in the first half of the last century. Especially interesting are the stories and points of view of those who work and live on its shores, the fate of the native indians who have lived in the region for hundreds of years and the differences in culture between the Starbucks yuppies west of the Cascades and the blue collar workers so dependant on the water and its billions in federally subsidized benefits to the east. pHighly praised in reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, the Village Voice, The Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, it is a great read for the information, for the writing, for a piece of American history.
Wonderful writing. Interesting points of view. April 6, 2002
Frank Mclaughlin (Herndon, VA USA)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Once in a great while a book comes along that is so beautifully written, with stories so well told, that the subject matter seems secondary to the writer's ability to sustain interest. For me, with little interest in the northwest (I've been there twice), this was such a book. It is from Harden's exceptional skill as a writer and narrator of stories that the Columbia River suddenly became of great interest as I turned his pages. pA River Lost tells the story and history of the Columbia River and the environmental, economic and aesthetic impact of daming that river in the first half of the last century. Especially interesting are the stories and points of view of those who work and live on its shores, the fate of the native indians who have lived in the region for hundreds of years and the differences in culture between the Starbucks yuppies east of the Cascades and the blue collar workers so dependant on the water and its billions in federally subsidized benefits to the west. pHighly praised in reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, the Village Voice, The Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, it is a great read for the information, for the writing, for a piece of American history.
An eye opener. March 6, 2002
Slick Rick (Redmond, WA United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I grew up in the Tri-Cities and spent the first 19 years of my life living just blocks away from the Columbia River and there was a lot of information told in this book that I never knew. Harden does a wonderful job of relating the history of the Columbia River and the effects that the many dams built on the river had on the land, the people, the nation, and the economy. I thoroughly enjoyed his story and felt he handled well the many issues important to preservationists, politicians, and farmers.pI recommend this to anyone who lives in the state of Washington and is interested in man's permanent effects on this land.
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