Post 12 (28Nov Class)
Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert is a history of the many public works projects of the Bureau of Reclamation, and to a lesser extent, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Focusing on water projects—dams, aqueducts, and irrigation systems—the author detailed how the decisions to build were less driven by sound geologic and engineering studies, and more by politics and the influence of money interests.
The main theme is that the massive government-backed projects ultimately are detrimental to the environment and the economy. The result will be the destruction of the soil through higher salt concentrations, the build up of silt at dams and irrigation projects and the demise of the Ogallala aquifer.
Reisner paid particular attention to the career of Floyd Dominy, Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. The author detailed the Dominy’s bully-like rise through the ranks, often at the expense of others. Reisner seemed to somewhat obsessive in his criticism of Dominy, seeming to psycho-analyze the man, with an interest in his sexual exploits. He reserved the bulk of his attacks to the Bureau itself, describing the poor decision-making and planning, political-economic influences, and the coercive tactics that they used to driven landowners away.
While this book was informative in its history of water projects and water politics in the West, it was clear that Reisner was not objective and had agenda. His chapter on Dominy seemed less of a history and more of a personal attack. Dominy’s womanizing ways is completely irrelevant to the main story. The intended audience appeared to be less of the public, and more likely other likeminded environmental activists. Reisner’s talk of conspiracies and secret correspondences, some of which he assumed not based on evidence, but simply suspicion, weakened his credibility. Lastly, the absence of endnotes or footnotes leaves me to wonder about some of his statements.
I agree with Jim . I also got lost in the details, trying to keep track on people, places, projects, conspiracies around every corner. More detailed maps would have definitely helped me put all of this into a spatial context. On balance, I learned quite a bit from the book, but did we really need to know all of the details?
3 Comments:
I thought it was interesting that you found the Dominy chapter to be too much of an attack, and the womanizing to be irrelevant. Since Nixon dismissed him because his FBI file of dalliances was thicker than an encyclopedia, I think it was important to bring that out. But more than that, I liked Reisner trying to paint a three-dimension figure...libido, lust and all. I've faulted other authors for crossing this line. In one of my responses to Roaring Camp I asked "How much information is too much information, and when does it cease to be historically relevant and just become gratuitous?" I'm didn't ask that with Cadillac Desert because I do think it is relevant.
I agree with Rick that Reisner did not make a meaningful connection - really any connection - between Dominy's personal life and his professional one. The comments therefore look like a personal attack on Dominy and was unnecessary as there were plenty of substantive issues on which one could question him.
OK, I just have to jump into the pool of hot discussion about the inclusion of Dominy's womanizing side. Maybe it's not the traditional historian's technique to go inside a person's psyche or sexual habits and maybe it's the English major/writer side of me seeping through, but I felt Reisner was justified in including this aspect of one of the most arrogant and power-hungry jerks I have ever had the displeasure to meet in a non-fictional book. Dominy's sexual side, his apparent need to sexually dominate almost every woman he met, his audacity and pride in feeling justified in doing so, is to me a mirror image of his water projects problem side. Remember the preface poem, sarcastically alluding to Ozymandias's arrogance and pride in creating monuments to himself, and the laughability of it all in the face of mortality and environmental change? What other character in Reisner fits the description of Ozymandias (Ramses II) so well? Dominy acted like a pharoah deserving of a harem. I think Reisner was justified in putting the dirt in.
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