| Book Review | Western Historical Quarterly, 32.1

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| Book Review | Western Historical Quarterly, 32.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Drowning the Dream: California's Water Choices at the Millennium. By David Carle. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. xix + 235 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

Groundwater Management in the West. By Jeffrey S. Ashley and Zachary A. Smith. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. 319 pp. Glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

Neither of these books is technically a work of history, but each of them deals with elements of the history of water in the West, and they may therefore be of interest to historians. 1

Ashley and Smith are political scientists with interests in environmental policy; Smith has published extensively on issues related to managing water in the West. Their book is a survey of the conditions of groundwater management in nineteen states, from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast. In order to make the topic manageable, they identify a set of issues to be examined in each state. After describing the physical and demographic characteristics of each state and the primary uses to which water is put, the authors examine overdrafting of the aquifers, pollution, the legal environment, and the politics of groundwater use. This leads to a kind of chapter-by-chapter sameness that makes the book difficult to read as an argument. It seems more likely that students of water development in particular states will turn to this book as a reference guide. Since groundwater can rarely be discussed in isolation from surface water, the book offers a convenient summary of the legal and political situations in these states. . . .

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