Rivers of Empire - Worster, Donald (Meyerhoff Professor of American Environmental Studies, Meyerhoff Professor of American Environmental Studies, Brandeis University)

This treatise argues that the American West serves as a testament to a dependence upon water as the "shaping force" of a region's history and development. It defines the West as a "modern hydraulic society" dependent on man-made systems of irrigation such as dams, irrigation ditches and canals.