Shelf Awareness: enlightenment for readers

Life After Dead Pool:
Lake Powell's Last Days and the
Rebirth of the Colorado River
by Zak Podmore

Zak Podmore's Life After Dead Pool teases apart complicated issues at the Glen Canyon Dam: water management, Indigenous rights, and political, economic, and ecological concerns, all in the context of history and culture. With captivating storytelling, lively characters, and in-depth research, Podmore engages with these questions, offering surprising conclusions, a refreshing approach, and solutions outside of a traditional binary. Torrey House Press co-executive director Will Neville-Rehbehn calls Podmore a "master storyteller and... one of the preeminent investigative environmental reporters in the West." With its suggestion "that nature's capacity to heal may well outpace our own imaginations," Neville-Rehbehn writes, Life After Dead Pool "has the potential to redefine how we think about the future of water in the West." All serious thinkers need this book. --Julia Kastner

(Torrey House Press, $30 hardcover, 9798890920027, August 6, 2024)