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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393316904
• ISBN-13: 978-0393316902
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #865,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Blaine Harden is an author and journalist. His most recent book is Escape From Camp 14, a New York Times and international bestseller that was featured on 60 Minutes. It's the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person born and raised in a North Korean prison camp to escape to the West. Escape from Camp 14 won the 2012 Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique, a French literary award, and has been published in 24 languages.

Blaine, who is at work on a second book about North Korea, contributes to Foreign Policy, PBS Frontline and The Economist. A longtime foreign correspondent, 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 reporter for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine.

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 was published in 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.

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#2 in Books > History

#3 in Kindle eBooks > History

#4 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#6 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

#2 in Books > History

#3 in Kindle eBooks > History

#4 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#6 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

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

Format: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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed But A Good Beginning January 1, 2012

By Jon Chambreau

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A River Lost is about much more that just a book about the making of the Columbia River into a barge friendly irrigation system. Harden weaves autobiography, tales of everyday life, unchecked government power, the dynamic tension between the urban and rural in the Pacific Northwest. The book reveals the how the River washes over and changes, some would say corrodes, everything it touches. The heart of the book is more the river as it describes the unintended consequences that flows from good intentions and how affluence changes the political landscape from a focus on jobs to concern about the quality of life. The book should be read not as a conclusive picture of what has happened to the Columbia but as a starting point for further exploration.

The book has two weaknesses. The first is that it ignores the changes brought in the region's ecosystem when the salmon runs ceased in the upper Columbia. Millions of pounds of salmon were food not just for the Indians but for a variety of wildlife. A few words about what those changes have meant to the region's biota would have helped the reader to understand that far more than Indians were affected. The second weakness is when Harden brings contemporary politics into a tale of written with a historic perspective. Harden pointedly blames Republicans for stopping what he sees as beneficial change but puts no emphasis on how Democrats designed, sold and implemented the dams and irrigation as an beneficial scheme of social engineering. The book would have been stronger had that part been omitted. Neither party can claim to be on the side of the Gods when it comes to the Columbia.

That said, the book filled in gaps in my knowledge although, as a native Portlander a decade older than the author, I well remember the controversy over the flooding of Celilo Falls with the construction of The Dalles Dam and at being shocked in the late 1950s by the reported rise in the river's water temperature caused by cooling Hanford's reactors. Anyone buying the book today would do well to see what has been happening since the mid-1990s. And if salmon is your focus don't miss the PBS program Salmon: Running the Gauntlet at [...]

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

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

By Frank Mclaughlin

Format: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.