A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia - Softcover

Harden, Blaine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393316904 ISBN 13: 9780393316902

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997

Synopsis

"A River Lost is superbly reported and written with clarity, insight, and great skill."―Washington Post Book World

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 New York Times Book Review. "It must not have been easy for Blaine Harden to find himself turning his journalistic weapons against his own heritage, but he has done the conscience of his homeland a great service."

About this title

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.

About the Author

Blaine Harden, an award-winning journalist, is a contributor to The Economist and a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393316904
• ISBN 13: 9780393316902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272