The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a most precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster. In Cadillac Desert, now updated to cover recent developments in the West, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and businesses to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants -- the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- in the competition to transform the West.

Based on more than ten years of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden -- an Eden that may be only a mirage.

This is a new release of the book published in May 1993.

Marc Reisner was staff writer of the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1972 to 1979. In 1979 he received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship to investigate water resources in the West. In addition to Cadillac Desert, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Reisner is also author of Game Wars: The Undercover Pursuit of Wildlife Poachers. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Lawrie Mott, and two young daughters.

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