BOOK NOTICES
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Glen Canyon beyond Climate Change P H OTO G R A P H S E S S AYS
BY
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P E T E R
P E T E R
G O I N ,
F R I E D E R I C I
BY
J ONATH A N
FOST E R
Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2016. xv + 176 pp. Paper, $21.95
The Southwest’s iconic Hoover Dam is more recognizable than its associated world-class water parkland, Lake Meade. Whereas we have study after study on the Colorado River and Hoover Dam, Jonathan Foster’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area is among the few to cast light on the water body formed along the river’s course. Foster’s primary focus is on the reservoir as a recreational destination and the varying interests that manage or use it. As managers of the recreational area—the first of its kind—the National Park Service set the course for later water parklands management. Moreover, NPS management of Lake Mead made it difficult for the Park Service to claim the high ground on latter reclamation projects and signaled to the public the significance of the West’s reservoir-based recreation. The strength of the volume is in showing how diverse groups contested management of the reservoir, from federal agencies to special interests, politicians, and recreationists. In its first decades public access and use of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area was relatively unfettered; in more recent years increased water use in an age of drought and climate change has meant more restrictions and limitations on recreation use.
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U H Q
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A History of America’s First National Playground
A New Form of Beauty:
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Lake Mead National Recreation Area:
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CONTRIBUTORS
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. xv + 184 pp. Cloth, $40.00
The latest in a series of handsome coffee-table books, A New Form of Beauty captures Glen Canyon in striking scenes. Photographs organized into galleries—Artifacts, Flora and Fauna, Low Water—feature haunting images of a changed landscape as drought forces water to recede below full-reservoir levels. Text by Peter Friederici accompanies Peter Goin’s photographs. In a series of three brief essays, Friederici reflects on the disquiet of standing face-to-face with drought (and to see unfamiliarity in a landscape thought to be familiar), on water forecasts given realities of climate change, and on the path of acknowledging and even celebrating “our knowledge that we live at the end of nature, that the driver of the Earth’s powerful cycles has become us as much as it is the other thing” (123). In both words and images, this volume meditates not only on the transformation of a manmade reservoir but also on a regional transition and the subsequent realities occasioned by the scarcity of water.
KIRK HUFFAKER has served as executive director of Preservation Utah since 2008. Since 1998, he has provided assistance throughout Utah to build local preservation leadership, develop policy, and save historic buildings. A native of the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Huffaker holds a master’s degree in Historic Preservation from Eastern Michigan University. He is the author of Salt Lake City, Then and Now (2008). BIM OLIVER is a Salt Lake City consultant specializing in the study of Utah architecture of the twentieth century. His book about the changes that occurred along South Temple Street in the middle of the twentieth century, South Temple Street Landmarks: Salt Lake City’s First Historic District, was in January 2017. In 2015, Oliver completed a major survey of post– World War II buildings on the University of Utah campus, which is the basis for his article in this issue. RICHA WILSON earned a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Science in Historic Preservation before joining the Forest Service as its first architectural historian. She wishes
to thank the anonymous reviewers of the Utah Historical Quarterly for their suggestions and insightful comments. THOMAS CARTER’S graduate studies were in folklore at the University of North Carolina and Indiana University, but he slowly morphed into an architectural historian while working first in the Utah State Historic Preservation Office and then the University of Utah’s School of Architecture. Carter’s publications include (with Peter Goss) Utah’s Historic Architecture, (with Elizabeth Cromley) Invitation to Vernacular Architecture, and Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Utah. SHERI MURRAY ELLIS is an archaeological and historic preservation consultant with more than twenty-five years of professional experience in Utah. She holds a Master of Science in American Studies from Utah State University, with an emphasis on western American history, folklore, and architectural history.
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