Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology. Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999 Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

**** The first edition (1989) of this appealing popular reference is cited in ARBA 1990, Sheehy Suppl., and--we blush--RandR Book News. It provides a detailed yet concise portrait of every state (as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico), combining facts and statistics to profile the state's history, economy, population, cultural development, natural resources, and political system. Each chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography of nonfiction and reference volumes and an annotated list of literary works (fiction, memoirs, and biographies) in which the state and its people play a major role. Included in this revised and updated edition are two new sections, one covering the environment, the other presenting unusual state facts. For a broad audience. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR