In 1979 he received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship, which enabled him to conduct research and write Cadillac Desert, which was first published in 1986. Starting in 1972, he worked for seven years as a staff writer and director of communications for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. Career įor a time he was on the staffs of Environmental Action and the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.

He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of a lawyer and a scriptwriter, and graduated from Earlham College in 1970. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.Marc Reisner (Septem– July 21, 2000) was an American environmentalist and writer best known for his book Cadillac Desert, a history of water management in the American West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden-an Eden that may only be a mirage. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. 'The definitive work on the West's water crisis.' -Newsweek

He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage - that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 “I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought.

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner