| Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935 Subjects: United States. Bureau of Reclamation; Reclamation of land -- West (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century; West (U.S.) -- Economic conditions -- 20th century; Water-supply -- Government policy -- West (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century; 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. Pisani Donald J. : Donald J. Pisani is Merrick Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. His books include a previous history to which this one is a sequel, To Reclaim a Divided West (1992), as well as Water, Land, and Law in the West (1996) and From the Family Farm to Agribusiness (California, 1984). |