| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism. By Robert W. Righter. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xxiv + 303 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $30.00.)

The Hetch Hetchy story has become a chestnut. It appears in textbooks and survey lectures as the archetypical contest between conservationists and preservationists or between the rights of civilization and those of wilderness. The story was most influentially narrated by Roderick Nash in Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, 1967). Surprisingly, Robert Righter is the first historian to write a book-length follow-up. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy provides a welcome corrective. Righter complicates the conventional environmentalist narrative; he sees "a fight in which there were no real villains" (p. 244). Even better, he revives a second important battle—the battle over electric power.

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