The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell

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Summary: A moving documentation of Glen Canyon before Lake Powell.
Review: Glen Canyon before Lake Powell is at once a beautiful and tragic book. It consists of a collection of photographs--mostly color--of the landscape now hidden beneath the eerie turquoise waters of Lake Powell, a vast man-made reservoir on the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border. Editor Eleanor Inskip has skillfully paired each photograph with quotations from those who knew Glen Canyon before the water began to rise on that fateful day in January 1963. Explorers, river runners, popular writers, archaeologists, historians, and environmentalists all find a voice in this extraordinary collection, but the work's greatest strength is nevertheless its images.

The book is neither strident nor moralizing in tone. Instead, a sense of quiet grief pervades. The photographs speak for themselves, as do the observations so eloquently captured in the accompanying quotations. In the end, the questions raised are unspoken but obvious: Who are we to decide the fate of an organism so alive and so vital as a river? What have we lost in our relentless quest for the "good life?" And can it in fact be a "good life" with the waters of the Colorado stilled? Inskip respects her readers enough to let them judge for themselves.

Admirers of Eliot Porter's famous The Place No One Knew, now out of print, will find this to be an appropriate companion volume. Very highly recommended.

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Summary: Moving, well-researched visual & spitual history
Review: Through carefully chosen photographs and comments of people who experienced Glen Canyon before it was inundated by Lake Powell, Inskip presents a moving portrait of sinuous sandstone channels, lush microclimates, and the favorite beaches we will never again view.