The Source: How Rivers Made America And How America Remade Its Rivers, Doyle - C, Inc.

                                                      "Rivers are the defining feature of America's landscape." We have over 3 million miles of rivers in the lower 48. "This book is about how our ideas have shaped the rivers of America - and how the rivers have shaped our ideas."  Both Washington and Jefferson were concerned about the new nation's need to spread over the Appalachians and the fact that there was no river that crossed the mountains. Instead of a river, it would be a canal in NY that connected the seaboard with the expanding country. As important as the Erie Canal and the Hudson River were to the economy of the young nation, it was the mighty Mississippi and its tributaries the Tennessee, the Ohio, the Illinois and the Missouri - that linked together the United States.  The great rivers of the west were managed by the Corps of Engineers for the simple reason that the only engineers in the new nation were graduates of the USMA. The full federalization of the nation's rivers came after the 1927 Mississippi flood forced the federal government into the flood control business.
                                                     From my perspective, this book lacked a unifying narrative, which is why I skimmed a great deal. A section on sovereignty discussed the Colorado River Compact, a section on taxation discussed how states developed systems to pay for canals, a section on regulation discussed utilities, and the closing section on conservation reviewed the efforts going on around the country to revise some of the consequences of industrialization and over-population.