Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World (by Steven Hawley)

The ugly truth about dams is about to be revealed.

Click here for interactive maps about dams and rivers from ESRI

During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the whole messy truth about the legacy of last century’s big dam-building binge has come to light. What started out as an arguably good government project has drifted oceans away from that original virtuous intent. Governments plugged the nation’s rivers in a misguided attempt to turn them into revenue streams. Water control projects’ main legacy will be one of needless ecological destruction, fostering a host of unnecessary injustices.

The estimated 800,000 dams in the world can’t be blamed for destroying the Earth’s entire biological inheritance, but they play an outsized role in that destruction. Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Crazy World is a kind of speed date with the history of water control -- its dams, diversions and canals, and just as importantly, the politics and power that evolved with them. Examples from the American West reveal that the costs of building and maintaining a sprawling water storage and delivery complex in an arid world—growing increasingly arid under the ravages of climate chaos—is well beyond the benefits furnished. Success stories from Patagonia and the Blue Heart of Europe point to a possible future where rivers run free and the Earth restores itself.

Details

• About the Author

  Steven Hawley is a writer and filmmaker from Hood River, Oregon. He is the writer and co-producer of an award-winning documentary, Dammed to Extinction (2019), and the author of Recovering a Lost River (Beacon Press, 2011). He’s a contributor at The Drake, Mountain Outlaw, and Columbia Insight

• Foreword by David James Duncan

  David James Duncan is an American novelist and essayist, best known for his two bestselling novels, The River Whyand The Brothers K. Both novels received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers award; The Brothers Kwas a New York Times Notable Book in 1992 and won a Best Books Award from the American Library Association

• Endorsement

  Watercourses wild and free have in the last two centuries been dammed, blocked, chocked and choked in so many ways that the USA can seem a dam nation. Hawley opens the gates to a view of this crime against nature, showing how many of these concrete erections are past their use-by date, and the calamities they continue to cause to fish, land, water, other wildlife, and Native rights.—Carl Safina, author Beyond Words and Becoming Wild

• Endorsement

  Provocative, well-written, and splendidly illustrated, Steven Hawley’s Cracked is a ferocious critique of dammed-up rivers. It reveals the extraordinary and little understood costs of ‘clean, green’ hydropower.—Blaine Harden, author of A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia

• Specifications

  Hardcover; 320 pages printed in full color with over 80 photos throughout; 6" X 9 1/4"

• Publisher

  Published by Patagonia

• Special Features

  Online resource folder includes: Bibliography and interactive maps from ESRI documenting the condition of dams throughout the country, where dams have been removed, and the beneficial effects of dam removal. Book also includes an index

• Country of Origin

  Made in USA.

• Weight

  879 g (31 oz)

• Last Season Color Offered at Full Price

Materials & Care Instructions

• Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper

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Click here for the bibliogrphy of Cracked.