Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935

Author/Contributor(s):	Pisani, Donald J
Publisher:	University of California Press
Date:	12/31/2002
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

Donald Pisani's history of perhaps the boldest economic and social program ever undertaken in the United States--to reclaim and cultivate vast areas of previously unusable land across the country-shows in fascinating detail how ambitious government programs fall prey to the power of local interest groups and the federal system of governance itself. What began as the underwriting of a variety of projects to create family farms and farming communities had become by the 1930s a massive public works and regional development program, with an emphasis on the urban as much as on the rural West.