Most water control projects in the American West depend on huge gravity dams, whose stability lies in massive quantities of concrete and earth or rock fill. In the early twentieth century, John S. Eastwood designed novel dams that minimized the concrete necessary for construction.

Eastwood s multiple-arch designs proved less expensive than comparable gravity dams. Yet he faced the opposition of a powerful cadre of engineers, financiers, and politicians who believed the distinctive appearance of multiple-arch dams did not inspire public confidence. Donald C. Jackson offers compelling...

Tracks is a pilgrimage into the wild, beautiful, and lonely places around us. Donald C. Jackson, a professor in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries at Mississippi State University, invites the reader to share the trail with him and discover connections to different vistas not only in the South but also in distant lands and on exotic waters.

Through the many stories of this avid hunter, fisher, and trapper, Tracks travels into the swamps and wetlands, hills and tundra, forests and jungles, and on rivers, ponds, tropical lagoons, and the sea. Frog gigging adventures...

In Wilder Ways, Donald C. Jackson takes readers on a journey into the deep and very personal connections that can develop between people and wild places while hunting, fishing, and rambling across landscapes. Fishing by lantern light late at night for bullhead catfish on a small stream, hunting wood ducks and squirrels on his farm in north Mississippi, bow hunting deer as twilight creeps across a small clearing, handlining crabs in the Pascagoula River estuary, hunting caribou in Alaska and elk in Colorado, searching for blind fish in Ozark caves, and fighting a storm on an...

In Pastoral and Monumental, Donald C. Jackson chronicles America's longtime fascination with dams as represented on picture postcards from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through over four hundred images, Jackson documents the remarkable transformation of dams and their significance to the environment and culture of America.

Initially, dams were portrayed in pastoral settings on postcards that might jokingly proclaim them as "a dam pretty place." But scenes of flood damage, dam collapses, and other disasters also captured people's attention. Later, images of...

In Deeper Currents, Donald C. Jackson guides us on a journey into the cathedrals of wild and lonely places, those sacred spaces where hunters and fishers connect with the rhythms of the earth and the spirit that resonates within us. Jackson explores hunting and fishing as frameworks--sacraments--for discovering, engaging, and finding meaning. He invites readers to consider connections with wilder realms of being.

Hunting squirrels on an autumn morning, probing the woods, rifle in hand, Jackson reveals an attention to nature too often neglected. Following a bird dog into the damp...