Needham, Andrew (Author)
Princeton University Press
Physical Details: ix + 321 pp.; ill.; maps
Language: English
n 1940, Phoenix was a small, agricultural city of sixty-five thousand, and the Navajo Reservation was an open landscape of scattered sheepherders. Forty years later, Phoenix had blossomed into a metropolis of 1.5 million people and the territory of the Navajo Nation was home to two of the largest strip mines in the world. Five coal-burning power plants surrounded the reservation, generating electricity for export to Phoenix, Los Angeles, and other cities. Exploring the postwar developments of these two very different landscapes, Power Lines tells the story of the far-reaching environmental and social inequalities of metropolitan growth, and the roots of the contemporary coal-fueled climate change crisis. Andrew Needham explains how inexpensive electricity became a requirement for modern life in Phoenix---driving assembly lines and cooling the oppressive heat. Navajo officials initially hoped energy development would improve their lands too, but as ash piles marked their landscape, air pollution filled the skies, and almost half of Navajo households remained without electricity, many Navajos came to view power lines as a sign of their subordination in the Southwest. Drawing together urban, environmental, and American Indian history, Needham demonstrates how power lines created unequal connections between distant landscapes and how environmental changes associated with suburbanization reached far beyond the metropolitan frontier. Needham also offers a new account of postwar inequality, arguing that residents of the metropolitan periphery suffered similar patterns of marginalization as those faced in America's inner cities. Telling how coal from Indian lands became the fuel of modernity in the Southwest, Power Lines explores the dramatic effects that this energy system has had on the people and environment of the region.
...MoreReview Leah S. Glaser (Spring 2017) Review of "Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest". Business History Review (pp. 198-201).
Review Adam Rome (2015) Review of "Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest". Journal of American History (pp. 288-288).
Review Michael F. Logan (2015) Review of "Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest". American Historical Review (pp. 1921-1922).
Review Rome, Adam (2015) Review of "Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest". Journal of American History (p. 288).
Review Cohn, Julie (2015) Review of "Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest". Environmental History (pp. 809-810).
Similar Citations
Book
David F. Myrick;
(2001)
Santa Fe to Phoenix - Railroads of Arizona Vol. 5
(/isis/citation/CBB527684139/)
Book
David F. Myrick;
(2010)
Railroads of Arizona: Volume 6, Jerome and northern roads
(/isis/citation/CBB452985139/)
Book
David F. Myrick;
(1980)
Railroads of Arizona, Vol. 2: Phoenix and the Central Roads
(/isis/citation/CBB085477118/)
Book
VanderMeer, Philip R.;
(2010)
Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix, 1860--2009
(/isis/citation/CBB001213385/)
Book
David F. Myrick;
(1975)
Railroads of Arizona, Vol. 1: The Southern Roads
(/isis/citation/CBB245944388/)
Book
Melissa L. Sevigny;
(2016)
Under Desert Skies: How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets
(/isis/citation/CBB602804549/)
Book
David F. Myrick;
(1984)
Railroads of Arizona, Vol. 3: Clifton, Morenci and Metcalf, Rails and Copper Mines -- Arizona Locomotive Rosters
(/isis/citation/CBB799397716/)
Book
Jack Stauder;
(2016)
The Blue and the Green: A Cultural Ecological History of an Arizona Ranching Community
(/isis/citation/CBB222944077/)
Book
Byron E. Pearson;
(2019)
Saving Grand Canyon : Dams, deals, and a noble myth
(/isis/citation/CBB033650339/)
Book
Logan, Michael F.;
(2006)
Desert Cities: The Environmental History of Phoenix and Tucson
(/isis/citation/CBB000930102/)
Thesis
MacMahon, Sandra Varney;
(2003)
Tuberculosis, the Navajos, and Western Healthcare Providers, 1920--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001562285/)
Article
Rainhorn, Judith;
(2012)
L'“épidémiologie de la Bottine” ou l'Enquête Médicale Réinventée. Alice Hamilton et la Médecine Industrielle dans l'Amérique du Premier XXe Siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001420250/)
Book
Thomas Gryta;
Ted Mann;
(2020)
Lights out : Pride, delusion, and the fall of General Electric
(/isis/citation/CBB105086357/)
Book
Julie A. Cohn;
(2017)
The Grid: Biography of an American Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB970828462/)
Article
Kitchens, Carl;
(2014)
The Role of Publicly Provided Electricity in Economic Development: The Experience of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1929--1955
(/isis/citation/CBB001450385/)
Book
Nye, David E.;
(2010)
When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America
(/isis/citation/CBB001031316/)
Article
Laymon, Sherry;
(2012)
Arkansas's Dark Ages: The Struggle to Electrify the State.
(/isis/citation/CBB001200581/)
Book
Jakle, John A.;
(2001)
City Lights: Illuminating the American Night
(/isis/citation/CBB000502016/)
Chapter
Reitman, F.;
Reitman, J.;
(1999)
Women working at the manufacture of electrical machinery, 1904: film and text
(/isis/citation/CBB267285875/)
Book
Glaser, Leah S.;
(2009)
Electrifying the Rural American West: Stories of Power, People, and Place
(/isis/citation/CBB001212287/)
Be the first to comment!