In this history of the American West, Worster writes against the myth of the West as a place of rugged individualism, a place of democratic opportunity that existed in contrast to the hierarchically structured East. By focusing on the issue of irrigation, he aims to show that the West has (and has long had) a hierarchical power structure of its own: individuals, working alone, did not build (and could not have built) the dams that bring water to the lands that once were desert-dry. Also anti-democratic: the huge farms and farmers’ associations that developed needed a base of cheap labor in order to survive, people without land of their own. It’s a well thought-out argument, and it’s an interesting approach to the history of the settlement as the West. Most of all, I appreciated the details of it all, the people and plants and places of this region I know next to nothing about, the footnotes and mentions of Mary Austin and Edward Abbey and other people whose books I want to read. Worster’s metaphors are sometimes stretched too far, and when the writing’s not flowery, it sometimes errs on the side of dryness, but overall, Worster’s prose is clear and reasonably lively.
I especially love this, from the book’s last paragraph: the desert “might encourage […] an America in which people are wont to sit long hours doing nothing, earning nothing, going nowhere, on the bank of some river running through a spare, lean land. They would come then to the river to see a reflection of their own liberated minds, running free and easy. They would want little, enjoy much.”
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