A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia [Paperback]

Blaine Harden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 1997

"A River Lost is superbly reported and written with clarity, insight, and great skill."—Washington Post Book World

After a two-decade absence, Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden returned to his small-town birthplace in the Pacific Northwest to follow the rise and fall of the West's most thoroughly conquered river.

Harden's hometown, Moses Lake, Washington, could not have existed without massive irrigation schemes. His father, a Depression migrant trained as a welder, helped build dams and later worked at the secret Hanford plutonium plant. Now he and his neighbors, once considered patriots, stand accused of killing the river.

As Blaine Harden traveled the Columbia-by barge, car, and sometimes on foot-his past seemed both foreign and familiar. A personal narrative of rediscovery joined a narrative of exploitation: of Native Americans, of endangered salmon, of nuclear waste, and of a once-wild river now tamed to puddled remains.

Part history, part memoir, part lament, "this is a brave and precise book," according to the New York Times Book Review. "It must not have been easy for Blaine Harden to find himself turning his journalistic weapons against his own heritage, but he has done the conscience of his homeland a great service."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A century ago the place where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean was a violent cauldron of churning water, all but unnavigable. But the mighty river was tamed by the building of a series of dams, including the colossal Grand Coulee, to provide cheap hydroelectric power and irrigation water. Farms bloomed in the desert; nuclear reactors mushroomed on the river bank. Today barges ply the river, and Lewiston, Idaho, is an inland port. But the negative aspects of human impact are also apparent--the depletion of salmon stocks and the destruction of Native American cultures dependent on the salmon. Washington Post journalist Harden, a Northwest native, returns to examine the changes man has wrought. Harden's enthralling account is balanced and thorough. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Although shorter than the Mississippi, the Columbia River, on the border between Washington and Oregon, is many times more powerful. Its energy comes from its steepness?it falls twice as far as the Mississippi in half the distance, and is what so attracted government engineers interested in producing hydroelectric power. Numerous dams, including Grand Coulee, "larger than any structure ever built in world history," transformed the river into a huge, navigable lake making Lewiston, Idaho, an unlikely seaport. "The river was killed more than sixty years ago and was reborn as plumbing." Washington Post journalist Harden goes back to his boyhood home (Moses Lake, Wash.) and examines the changes?sociological, environmental, economic and aesthetic?that the taming of this great river wrought. His wonderful account touches on the destruction of Native American cultures dependent on the river and its salmon, and on the near extinction of the salmon themselves. Also fairly portrayed are the people and industries currently dependent on both the managed river and massive government subsidies: the nuclear industry, commercial barge traffic and desert farmers irrigating with the river's water. Harden provides a sensitive and thoughtful examination of a complex situation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393316904
• ISBN-13: 978-0393316902
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #651,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a roving national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine.

His most recent book is Escape From Camp 14. It's the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have been born and raised in a North Korean prison camp -- and to have escaped to the West. It will published in late March in the United States by Viking, and in much of Europe in April. In a pre-publication review, Publisher's Weekly said Escape from Camp 14 "reads like a dystopian thriller."

Blaine is also the author of A River Lost. It's about well-intentioned Americans (including the author's father) who dammed and degraded the West's greatest river, the Columbia. The New York Times called it a "hard-nosed, tough-minded, clear-eyed dispatch on the sort of contentious subject that is almost always distorted by ideology or obscured by a fog of sentiment." An updated and revised edition of A River Lost will be published by Norton in the spring of 2012 to coincide with a PBS American Experience program about Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia River.

Blaine's first book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, was described by The Independent (London) as the "best contemporary book on Africa."

Blaine lives in Seattle with his wife Jessica and their two children, Lucinda and Arno.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable and thought-provoking, December 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Paperback)

Although the author probably is personally opposed to the dams on the Columbia, his vivid and respectful profiles of the different users of the river (the slackwater barge operator, the Indian tribe that lost its source of food when the river was dammed, the irrigation farmer, the windsurfing yuppie, the father and son who work on the Hanford cleanup) make us understand that no matter how this tricky issue is resolved, there will be a human cost. His recollection of growing up in Moses Lake, a town which owes its prosperity to the dams, adds even more credibility to his account.

Harden's device of telling the story in stages, as a trip down the river, is unobtrusive and keeps things interesting. This book will make you think and it will also treat you to some gorgeous descriptions of the Columbia.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener., March 5, 2002

By 

Rick (Issaquah WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Paperback)

I grew up in the Tri-Cities and spent the first 19 years of my life living just blocks away from the Columbia River and there was a lot of information told in this book that I never knew. Harden does a wonderful job of relating the history of the Columbia River and the effects that the many dams built on the river had on the land, the people, the nation, and the economy. I thoroughly enjoyed his story and felt he handled well the many issues important to preservationists, politicians, and farmers.

I recommend this to anyone who lives in the state of Washington and is interested in man's permanent effects on this land.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful writing. Interesting points of view., April 6, 2002

By 

Frank Mclaughlin "frank mclaughlin" (Herndon, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Hardcover)

Once in a great while a book comes along that is so beautifully written, with stories so well told, that the subject matter seems secondary to the writer's ability to sustain interest. For me, with little interest in the northwest (I've been there twice), this was such a book. It is from Harden's exceptional skill as a writer and narrator of stories that the Columbia River suddenly became of great interest as I turned his pages.

"A River Lost" tells the story and history of the Columbia River and the environmental, economic and aesthetic impact of daming that river in the first half of the last century. Especially interesting are the stories and points of view of those who work and live on its shores, the fate of the native indians who have lived in the region for hundreds of years and the differences in culture between the Starbucks yuppies west of the Cascades and the blue collar workers so dependant on the water and its billions in federally subsidized benefits to the east.

Highly praised in reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, the Village Voice, The Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, it is a great read for the information, for the writing, for a piece of American history.