Stretching for 170 miles across northern Arizona and southern Utah, Lake Powell is both a vacationer's paradise and the second-largest reservoir in the Western Hemisphere. Yet few visitors to the lake today are aware of the lost world that lies beneath its crystal waters. Once an enchanted landscape of sandstone cliffs and secret crevices, Glen Canyon has been but a memory since the damming of the Colorado River near Page, Arizona, in 1963. Often called "the place no one knew," Glen Canyon was in fact explored by thousands of visitors—including dozens of writers—before the dam's completion. River runner Mathew Gross has combed the literature of Glen Canyon to assemble this wide-ranging look at the history of this now-submerged natural treasure, the first book to bring together these voices of remembrance. Beginning with the first known written report of Glen Canyon in an eighteenth-century missionary journal, Gross has selected accounts of the canyon from both before and after the dam. Included are some of the West's best-known writers—Zane Grey and Katie Lee, Edward Abbey and Ellen Meloy—as well as Pulitzer Prize winners John McPhee and Wallace Stegner. Other authors range from David Brower, director of the Sierra Club when the dam was built, to Floyd Dominy, the federal bureaucrat responsible for the dam. The Glen Canyon Reader is a book that may be read straight through as entertaining and informative history. But as Gross suggests, "Perhaps more pleasurable is to flip through these pages, to poke around and explore, as one would have done in Glen Canyon . . . to visit and revisit the places contained in this book, these cool glens and embracing alcoves and hidden grottos, these canyons and dreams and ghosts that will always, always be with us."
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A fabulous, vivid compilation . . . This book paints an intimate portrait of Glen Canyon that even outdoes picture-laden books. --Deseret News
Glen Canyon may be underwater, but its memory refuses to drown. Gross' anthology will stoke the fire of your imagination, leaving you to dream of a past you never knew. --Tucson Weekly
Glen Canyon may be underwater, but its memory refuses to drown. Gross' anthology will stoke the fire of your imagination, leaving you to dream of a past you never knew. --Tucson Weekly
"A fabulous, vivid compilation . . . This book paints an intimate portrait of Glen Canyon that even outdoes picture-laden books." —Deseret News "Glen Canyon may be underwater, but its memory refuses to drown. Gross' anthology will stoke the fire of your imagination, leaving you to dream of a past you never knew." —Tucson Weekly "Whatever your views about dams and the Glen Canyon Dam in particular, this book is worth reading for the literature included." —Electronic Green Journal
From the Inside Flap
Stretching for 170 miles across northern Arizona and southern Utah, Lake Powell is both a vacationer's paradise and the second-largest reservoir in the Western Hemisphere. Yet few visitors to the lake today are aware of the lost world that lies beneath its crystal waters. Once an enchanted landscape of sandstone cliffs and secret crevices, Glen Canyon has been but a memory since the damming of the Colorado River near Page, Arizona, in 1963.
Often called "the place no one knew," Glen Canyon was in fact explored by thousands of visitors--including dozens of writers--before the dam's completion. River runner Mathew Gross has combed the literature of Glen Canyon to assemble this wide-ranging look at the history of this now-submerged natural treasure, the first book to bring together these voices of remembrance.
Beginning with the first known written report of Glen Canyon in an eighteenth-century missionary journal, Gross has selected accounts of the canyon from both before and after the dam. Included are some of the West's best-known writers--Zane Grey and Katie Lee, Edward Abbey and Ellen Meloy--as well as Pulitzer Prize winners John McPhee and Wallace Stegner. Other authors range from David Brower, director of the Sierra Club when the dam was built, to Floyd Dominy, the federal bureaucrat responsible for the dam.
The Glen Canyon Reader is a book that may be read straight through as entertaining and informative history. But as Gross suggests, "Perhaps more pleasurable is to flip through these pages, to poke around and explore, as one would have done in Glen Canyon . . . to visit and revisit the places contained in this book, these cool glens and embracing alcoves and hidden grottos, these canyons and dreams and ghosts that will always, always be with us."
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More About the Author
Mathew Barrett Gross "rewrote the rules of presidential politics" as the director of Internet Communications for Howard Dean's groundbreaking 2003-2004 presidential campaign. Highly regarded as a new media strategist, he has consulted for numerous political campaigns, advocacy organizations, and global NGOs, and has been profiled in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Fast Company. A former rock drummer and river guide, he lives in Moab, Utah. Website: http://LastMyth.com and http://facebook.com/theLastMyth
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fits in an ammo box, too,
This review is from: The Glen Canyon Reader (Paperback)
This is the definitive collection of literature on Glen Canyon and explains why this long-drowned wonder is still the heart of the American West, and still the rallying call for those who'd like some sanity restored to the debate on river, dams, and the irreversible creep of air-condiioned pueblettes and motorized recreation across the great desert.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If I could give it 3 1/2 stars, I would.,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Glen Canyon Reader (Paperback)
I have read probably over fifty books about Glen Canyon, Lake Powell, and the San Juan, Escalante, and Colorado Rivers, not to mention countless articles, all while researching a book about Lake Powell of my own.
That said, "The Glen Canyon Reader" offers a nice assortment of selections from many of those books, and a few articles and excerpts from books and magazines that are usually much harder to find. I would recommend it to anyone looking to get a rough overview of Glen Canyon history. The book's selections by Edward Abbey, Bruce Berger, and Jared Farmer, are terrific, especially the article by Jared Farmer (author of "Glen Canyon Dammed"). While reading Jared Farmer's article, a line from "The Great Gatsby" kept flitting through my head: "You're worth the whole damn bunch of them put together." His almost shouldn't have been included, because it made most of the others seem inferior. In contrast to his, the historical excerpts from John Wesley Powell and from Escalante & Dominguez seemed dustier and more stale, the magazine articles seemed triter, and Katie Lee's book excerpt seemed even more crazed and poorly written that it would have seemed normally. Katie Lee's excerpt is a main reason I haven't rated this book higher. I just really don't like her writing, or her insanely political, idealizing, villainizing stance. I think her presence is a much bigger detriment to the case against Glen Canyon Dam that it is a help. Female folksingers are annoying. Poll America, and I'm sure the majority will agree with me. Katie Lee is like a Joan Baez singing awful rhymes about the Colorado River swishing between her legs; her poetry is awful; her cutesy sayings about the "Bureau of Wreck-the-Nation" are just not funny. Skip her excerpt, and you're reading a solid, four star book. The book is not a bad overview, though. I really did enjoy it. I do wish it had at least a single excerpt from the writings or oral history of some of of the Native Americans in the area though, and I think the editor could have done more to find another piece or two representing modern-day Glen Canyon, a.k.a. Lake Powell. Despite having read a lot on this subject the last few years, I did learn things from this book. It contains Floyd Dominy's out of print booklet "Lake Powell: Jewel of the Colorado," it has clues to the Everett Ruess mystery I haven't read elsewhere, and it features several stories of animals trapped by the rising waters of Lake Powell that were completely new to me. If you're passionate about this subject, absolutely, get this book. You'll almost certainly learn something new. And, if you know nothing about this subject, this really wouldn't be a bad place to start.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but not compelling,
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This review is from: The Glen Canyon Reader (Paperback)
Got this book in advance of visiting area. While it had some good sections, it was very specific to dam/activities surrounding it. Good, but not great, book
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