About the Author

Joseph E. Stevens, a graduate of Princeton University, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His first book, Hoover Dam: An American Adventure, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1988. It received the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, and the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize of the Western History Association.

Reviews

Hoover Dam was the supreme engineering feat of its time (1931-1935), a triumph of American ingenuity and technology. More than half a century later, even with bigger and more sophisticated dams, it remains the benchmark, the granddaddy of big dams, yet this is the first full story of Hoover Dam from conception through construction to completion. Stevens has written a riveting history that reads like a novel; he captures our attention at the beginning and holds it throughout. Here is a powerful evocation of Depression times, of shantytowns in the desert, of hazardous working conditions. Stevens shows us men working in superheated tunnels permeated with carbon monoxide and daredevil scalers high on the canyon walls. We meet the chief field engineer Frank Crowe, who got the project completed two years ahead of schedule; officers of the Six Companies who gambled on the feasibility of building the dam and won; Sims Ely, dictator of the government town, Boulder City; and much of the labor force. Stevens lays to rest the lore that workers are buried in concrete; while the accident rate was high, bodies were always recovered. Superb Americana. Photos. (June)

This fine monograph about the building of Hoover Dam tells the story from design through construction and opening of the massive structure. Stevens successfully integrates the engineering history with the social history of the work force, persuasively arguing for the importance of the dam in transforming the Southwest and Southern California. Thorough research and brisk writing keep the narrative well-paced and interesting to general readers. Photos are incorporated within the text. The only fault is the book's uncritical view of the intensive development of western rivers. Readers might wish to contrast Stevens's celebratory picture of dam builders with Donald Worster's pessimistic view ( Rivers of Empire , LJ 2/1/86). James W. Oberly, Univ. of Wisconsin, Eau Claire