BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DAM

From the PREFACE:

In simplest terms, this book is concerned with water storage (a truly ancient technology) and examines some of its manifestations in the early twentieth-century American West. But at a deeper level it seeks to document how choices are made when a society confronts possibilities proffered by the technical/engineering community. These choices do not emanate from the machinations of an objective, neutral process. Rather, they reflect the complexity, confusion, and self-serving subjectivity of humanity itself, because that is what they are--the products of human culture.


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Recognizing that some readers might be hesitant to confront technical and mathematical issues related to hydraulic engineering, Building the Ultimate Dam strives to present in clear, simple terms the most important practical and theoretical concerns associated with dam building. Only in this way can the subject be taken out of its technological "black box" and considered on equal terms with social, political, and economic factors that affect historical development.


Numerous photographs and drawings visually complement many of the technical issues discussed in the text. These illustrations are intended as more than mere pictorial window-dressing; they are a primary feature of the book's effort to explicate dam design technology and its relation to the physical environment.


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The story of Eastwood's efforts to bring to American society what he considered to be the benefits of increased access to water storage demonstrates how easily the line between "public works" and "private interest" can be blurred. Technological progress may be easy to conceptualize abstractly, but when manifest in (literally) concrete artifacts affecting the real world, the concept assumes a complexity that challenges facile explanations about how human culture evolves. And that challenge is central to what BUILDING THE ULTIMATE DAM is all about.

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