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Rating: 
Summary: Failed by the authors own expectations
Review: Hands down the best history book written in English on a river. It rivals William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis" as the best environmental history book I've read. Anyone who spends time near/on rivers (especially the Columbia) will appreciate this book. White tells a fascinating, compact story (~100 pages) that will force the consciencious reader to rethink his/her relationship with rivers as a source of energy. The book is also a lesson in form and style.
Rating: 
Summary: The best environmental history book to date?
Review: Hands down the best history book written in English on a river. It rivals William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis" as the best environmental history book I've read. Anyone who spends time near/on rivers (especially the Columbia) will appreciate this book. White tells a fascinating, compact story (~100 pages) that will force the consciencious reader to rethink his/her relationship with rivers as a source of energy. The book is also a lesson in form and style.
Rating:
Summary: The best environmental history book to date?
Review: Hands down the best history book written in English on a river. It rivals William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis" as the best environmental history book I've read. Anyone who spends time near/on rivers (especially the Columbia) will appreciate this book. White tells a fascinating, compact story (~100 pages) that will force the consciencious reader to rethink his/her relationship with rivers as a source of energy. The book is also a lesson in form and style.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant but dispassionate
Review: Richard White's "Organic Machine" is a neat display of erudition and intelligence. Through the prism of the Columbia river, the book delves into the difficult relations between native Americans and white settlers. It shows the stronghold an aluminum multinational on local economy and politics. It informs us about the megalomania of giant state bureaucracies. It analyses the emergence and subsequent (enormously expensive) blunders in managing nuclear reactors, followed by the immense human and economic costs. It explores the society's attitudes to endangered species such as salmon, threatened with extinction because of technical progress. It shows us the power and resilience of a large river, unwilling to yield to the numerous dams built during the last 100 years. The Organic Machine compares to John Barry's "Rising Tide", which treated the Mississippi's history as a classic epic in 400+ pages. "Rising Tide" is a compelling page-turner, not at all times sharp in its analysis, but centered around brilliantly narrated biographies and societal sketches. The Columbia's history has been just as rich, but Richard White took a totally different approach to explain the river. All elements which made Rising Tide such a fun read are there, and more. But Richard White chose to strip the story to the bone. What remains is 112 pages of crisp, flawless analysis. "Organic Machine" is very smart, but I thought the author was too dispassionate. Every page in this book screams for more illustrative anecdotes, it should have been at least three times its actual size.
Rating:
Summary: Failed by the authors own expectations
Review: White says he "will measure the book's success by the extent to which is surprises its readers, catches them offguard, and forces them to think about new ways not merely about the Columbia but about nature and its relation to human beings and human history." Well if this is his standard he failed miserably. The book is an absolute bore because it focuses so much on ancient history. White tries to bring in Native Americans and salmon as a way of bridging the gap between nature and humans - it does so, but it is painfully slow, dull and uninteresting. The book changes a little as it moves into more modern times, but his ending thesis would have been just as strong had he not tortured the reader with a 50 page history lesson. The last chapter also includes the term "Organic Machine" about a dozen too many times. We figured out from the title what the term meant, rampant repetition doesn't bring out his meaning any more.
Rating:
Summary: Failed by the authors own expectations
Review: White says he "will measure the book's success by the extent to which is surprises its readers, catches them offguard, and forces them to think about new ways not merely about the Columbia but about nature and its relation to human beings and human history." Well if this is his standard he failed miserably. The book is an absolute bore because it focuses so much on ancient history. White tries to bring in Native Americans and salmon as a way of bridging the gap between nature and humans - it does so, but it is painfully slow, dull and uninteresting. The book changes a little as it moves into more modern times, but his ending thesis would have been just as strong had he not tortured the reader with a 50 page history lesson. The last chapter also includes the term "Organic Machine" about a dozen too many times. We figured out from the title what the term meant, rampant repetition doesn't bring out his meaning any more.
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