TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 141 The reader will find no coherent account of Morgan’s relation to specific intellectual or ideological currents. Eugenics and progressive education receive a few pages and “planning” a lively seven-page discussion. But, without explanation, the biographer notes that Mor gan “never cared much for electricity” (p. 7); and he refers only briefly to the conservation movement. Morgan’s disdain for the Army En gineers—not limited to technological disagreement—deserves more than passing mention. Talbert dismisses the concept of cooperatives as “socialistic” though tolerated in the “particularly strange” years of the Great Depression (pp. 124, 127). He needs to clarify the term “socialist” as applied to a man who wrote that “the necessity of business to pay its way is a great moral and prophylactic force for efficiency, economy, and productiveness” (in The Community of the Future and the Future ofCommunity, Yellow Springs, Ohio: Community Services, 1957). Nor does he try to reconcile Morgan’s alleged elitism with his ideal of the small face-to-face community. To conclude on an appreciative note, the author calls Morgan “a great reformer and a great moral conservative ... a man fiercely struggling to fulfill a vision” (pp. 201, 202). Talbert’s work, though flawed, may call deserved attention to a many-sided, earnest, and idiosyncratic figure who viewed technology as an element in the cre ation of a more humane society. Jean Christie Dr. Christie is professor of history, emerita, at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her work focuses particularly on the New Deal and she is the author of Morris Llewellyn Cooke: Progressive Engineer (New York: Garland, 1983). Water Power in the “Wilderness”: The History ofBonneville Lock and Dam. By William F. Willingham. Portland, Oreg.: Portland District Corps of Engineers, 1987. Pp. 73; illustrations, notes, bibliography. Paper. The Bonneville Lock and Dam was one of several important government-sponsored, Depression-era, multi-use dam projects in the American West. Bonneville, like its sister dams (Hoover, Shasta, and Grand Coulee), was built on a grand scale. The cofferdams used during construction were the largest ever attempted on an American river; the dam itself was designed to withstand larger floods than any previous American dam; the lock erected at the site had the highest single-lift ever attempted; the fish passage system was in novative and unprecedented; and the Kaplan turbines installed were among the earliest to be used in America on a large scale. The subject is thus a worthy one. Water Power in the “Wilderness” is a compact overview of the history of the Bonneville dam project from the planning stages in 1925 to the present In a well-written narrative, William Willingham does a very creditablejob of explaining the complexities of site selection and 142 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the novel elements of design and construction used at Bonneville in the long section of the book dealing with the dam’s erection. Com memorative publications often ignore negative issues. This one does not. Willingham reprints a two-page article from Collier’s (1937) highly critical of the Bonneville Dam. He discusses the effect that the dam had on salmon migration patterns and the extensive, and expensive, steps the Corps of Engineers took at Bonneville to mitigate the prob lem, noting that the efforts have not completely remedied it. Finally, unlike many commemorative publications, this one is well referenced, making it much more useful to scholars. Nonetheless, the work shares many of the problems of commemo rative publications. For instance, the narrative is not put into sufficient context. Willingham does consider the role of Depression-era politics, not only on the decision to construct Bonneville, but also on a number of specific design decisions. And he discusses such matters as the dam’s contribution to expanding Pacific coast industries in World War II and political disputes over electricity pricing policies. He does not, however, compare and contrast Bonneville with similar Depression-era projects such as the three major dam projects occurring almost simultaneously in the West—Hoover, Grand Goulee, and Shasta—or with TVA. Fi nally, the book has no central thesis, save that Bonneville had a major influence on the economic development of the Pacific...
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
May 1, 1989
Robert T Miyamoto + 3
