Set in both the arid lands of Arizona and the political backdrop of Washington, D.C., Vision in the Desert documents the life and career of longtime Arizona senator, Carl Hayden. One of the most powerful figures in the United States Congress, Hayden's public service career, centered on water and its distribution, is inseparable from the history of the West and the development of arid lands.
Elected to the House of Representatives in 1911, Hayden began a fifty-seven-year career in the U.S. Congress, serving as a Democratic House Representative for fifteen years and then as a Senator...

The Scopes Monkey Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti case, "Brown v the Board of Education," and even subsequent televised high profile murder trials pale in comparison to "Arizona v California," argues author Jack August in "Dividing Western Waters," August's look at Arizona's Herculean legal and political battle for an equitable share of the Colorado River. To this day "Arizona"" v ""California" is still influential.
By the time Mark Wilmer settled in the Salt River Valley in the early 1930s, he realized that four basic commodities made possible civilization in the arid West: land, air,...

In their unrelenting drive to create a thriving desert metropolis, leaders of the most populous city in the arid Southwest, Phoenix, Arizona, seemed oblivious to two essential elements that form a vibrant urban environment. The arts were noticeably absent and the city's urban core had dissipated into a vast and empty suburbia: a city lacking an urban heart. In 1980, a visionary - Dick Mallery, partner at the powerhouse law firm. Snell & Wilmer - emerged to take the first major step to shape Phoenix into a great city, not just a big one. A veritable civic drama, "Play by Play" illustrates the...

From the author of Dividing Western Waters comes a book on the development of the arid West--in particular the development of Arizona--as seen through the experiences of three generations of John Ruddle Nortons of Arizona. From the administration of Teddy Roosevelt and the earliest reclamation acts to the monumental case between California and Arizona that would determine how the life-giving waters of the Colorado River would be divided, the Nortons were at the center of Arizona's development into a vital population and agricultural...