July 12, 2019Book Review: Cadillac Desert
Reading Cadillac Desert as the son of a hydrologist was a personal experience. Marc Reisner’s sweeping history of water in the American West is already gripping on its own, but when you grow up hearing about salmon runs, river basins, and floods at the dinner table, the book is truly fascinating. Reisner visited my dad's graduate seminar at the University of Washington in the early 1990s, so I felt like I had to read this book to better understand how hydrologists think.
Reisner’s central argument is that the West was built on an unstable foundation of wishful thinking, political maneuvering, and massive, often misguided water projects. This feels both dramatic, yet accurate. He captures the tension between engineering ambition and environmental reality with flair, making the book feel more like an epic saga than a work of nonfiction.
What stood out most to me was how clearly the book reveals the consequences of ignoring hydrology in policy decisions. The projects that were hailed as miracles often became cautionary tales, and the book expounds on many of the issues I heard about growing up, like groundwater depletion, the proliferation of dams, and the ongoing problem of cities built faster than their water sources can sustain.
As someone raised around people who understand water, Cadillac Desert reads like a validation of every warning hydrologists have been giving for decades, and a reminder that we still haven't fully learned these lessons.