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WORK TITLE: Unruly Waters
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.kennalangarcher.com/
CITY: San Angelo
STATE: TX
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.kennalangarcher.com/about/ * http://www.angelo.edu/faculty/cv/karcher3.pdf * https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenna-lang-archer-5a99b056
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 14, 1982, Houston, TX.
EDUCATION:Baylor University, bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude), master’s degree; Texas Tech University, doctorate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, educator, and writer. Texas Tech University, Lubbock, taught laboratory courses as a graduate student; Angelo State University, San Agnelo, TX, history professor. Work-related activities include volunteering part-time as a archival assistant at the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, San Angelo, Texas. Plays various instruments with musical groups; served on the Board of Directors for both the San Angelo Symphony Society and the San Angelo Community Band.
AVOCATIONS:Photography, painting and playing music.
MEMBER:
Phi Beta Kappa.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Kenna Lang Archer received her undergraduate degree in environmental sciences and went on to study American history and English. In her role as a historian, she studies environmental history and specializes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although her primary focus is on rivers, she also studies the rhetoric of technology, the social discourse of development, and comparative environmental history. Her research includes examining the history of riparian systems and the relationship between humans and nature in order to explore what has shaped contemporary viewpoints of modernity, development, and continuity. As an educator, Archer notes on her home Web site that she began tutoring first-grade students when she was only in the fourth grade. She went on to work with students on the elementary, junior high, high school, and college levels. In college she primarily teaches introductory history courses. Archer is also a musician who plays several instruments and performs with musical groups.
In her first book, titled Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River, Archer examines the environmental history of a river that runs more than 1,200 miles from its headers in eastern New Mexico on through Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. Writing in the introduction t0 Unruly Waters, Archer points out that the Brazos River “has not shaped empires outside the short-lived Republic of Texas or earned a definite space within the national imagination.” Nevertheless, Archer writes the river is “a well-suited subject for study because it tells a unique story about the meaning, purpose, and potential of riparian development projects.” Archer also notes most improvement projects to the river — from dams to levees for flood control, navigation, and agriculture — mostly failed for their intended purposes, leaving many of the projects to be cast aside and abandoned.
According to Archer the Brazos River is a primary example of two important aspects of American history and society. First, America is a nation that is driven to progress via technology, but this technology often fails. Second, Americans at certain points in time and in various locations, have revealed a dedication to technocracy but this focused has changed at certain points in relation to the nation’s overall focus. Archer points out that for more than 200 years the Brazos River improvement efforts have shown almost equal attention to various aspects of the river’s control, including navigation, flood control, reclamation, and agricultural use. Archer also notes the Brazos River has kept a large part of its ecological stability. The book includes an appendix providing an overview of improvement projects to the river and an appendix providing a geological timeline.
Unruly Waters focuses primarily on the evolution of physical improvement efforts for the Brazos River from 1821 to 1980. Archer begins with a look at the river’s ecology and geology and then delves into cultural views of the river over time. Next she addresses agricultural ideals and attempted improvements on the river to meet these ideals. Another chapter focuses on locks and dams to improve navigation on the middle part of the river and then turns to the effort to build very large dams at the upper Brazos River. Archer closes with a chapter titled “The Defiant Brazos and the Persistence of its People,” in which Archer highlights how the river has thwarted so many attempts to alter it and how the people who live near the river have often opposed improvements to the river.
“Although Unruly Waters will be of interest mainly to those who study Texas history, it makes some useful claims about the broader history of American riparian development,” wrote Maria Lane in a review for the Journal of American History. Writing in the Journal of Southern History, Robert A. Gilmer remarked: Archer “manages to do quite a lot and will likely be of interest to a variety of readers studying topics as diverse as technology and society, regional identity, and water development projects.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Archer, Kenna Lang, Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2015.
PERIODICALS
Choice, October, 2015, T.P. Bowman, review of Unruly Waters, p. 305.
Journal of American History, September, 2016, Maria Lane, review of Unruly Waters, pp. 465-466.
Journal of Southern History, August, 2016, Robert A Gilmer, review of Unruly Waters, p. 720.
ONLINE
Kenna Lang Archer Home Page, http://www.kennalangarcher.com (March 13, 2017).
University of Denver Law Review Online, http://duwaterlawreview.com/ (May 27, 2015), Robert Montgomery, review of Unruly Waters.*
LC control no.: n 2014071498
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Archer, Kenna Lang, 1982-
Birth date: 19820314
Found in: Unruly waters, 2015: ECIP t.p. (Kenna Lang Archer) data
view (b. Mar. 14, 1982)
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Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
I study American environmental history as my primary field of expertise, specializing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I devote the bulk of my time and "intellectual energy" to studying rivers, but I am also interested in the rhetoric of technology, the social discourse of development, and comparative environmental history. My research, which frequently comments on riparian systems, examines the interrelationships between man and nature and seeks to understand what shapes contemporary conceptions of modernity, development, and continuity. With a background in environmental science, it is only natural that I would be drawn to a field of study that allows me to deconstruct and to discover the subtle patterns in our surrounding environments. A park is not just a park; it is a space that, through its layers, reveals a history of grazing, farming, civic improvement, and accumulation of capital. A dam is never just a reminder of technocracy, and a cityscape is a story of more than vertical space, urban growth, or industrial might.
Although I truly enjoy the researching and writing process, I will always be a teacher first. The desire to educate and to pass along my own sense of curiosity is deeply ingrained within me! I have been working with students since I began tutoring first graders as a fourth grader, and I have worked, at one time or another, with students in elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and colleges. I primarily teach introductory history courses (face-to-face and online), but I periodically augment those basic surveys with upper level courses. Although I find a special joy in introducing students to a subject that I love, I am always grateful for the opportunity to delve more deeply into issues of water, history, and environment with upperclassmen.
In addition to history courses, I have also taught environmental science labs and worked in the fields of city planning, natural resource management, and Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S.).
Name: Dr. Kenna Lang Archer
School: Angelo State University
Department: American History
Position: Instructor
Email: kenna.archer at angelo.edu or kennalangarcher at gmail.com
Born in Houston, Texas, I earned a full-ride to Baylor University as a National Merit Scholar. I received a bachelor's degree in the University Scholar Program (2004), pursuing specializations in Environmental Science, American History, and English and graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, and Valedictorian. I also received a master's degree in Environmental Science (2007) from Baylor University, taking classes in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems. I taught laboratory courses as a graduate student and won recognition for my teaching and my scholastic achievement. I graduated with a doctorate from Texas Tech University in American History (2012), pursuing my degree as a commuting student and again garnering recognition for my scholastic achievement. I currently teach history courses at Angelo State University and volunteer as a part-time archival assistant at the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark in San Angelo, Texas.
A passion for learning and achievement has marked my studies and my personal life since my first days in school. Indeed, my mother felt compelled to call from the theatre after watching her first Harry Potter movie. To paraphrase: "As early as kindergarten, you were that annoying child that knew all the answers, enjoyed knowing all of the answers, and flaunted knowing all of the answers ... you were Hermione Granger before there was a Harry Potter." Aptitude and strength tests likewise acknowledge that my foremost skills are achieving and learning. This love of things scholastic, though not an easy avenue to acceptance by one's peers, has resulted in an aptitude for researching, writing, and teaching that serves me well in my chosen profession. As trite as it may sound, I feel both honored and humbled by the opportunity to teach, to pass on to those who might listen my passion for knowledge and learning.
In those rare moments when I am not working in a classroom or in the buildings at Old Fort Concho, I spend my time supporting and practicing the arts. I have a love for photography as well as painting, and I practice both regularly. I also devote a considerable amount of my spare time to the performing arts. I play multiple instruments, participate in multiple musical groups, and have served on the Board of Directors for both the San Angelo Symphony Society and the San Angelo Community Band.
If you would like more detailed information on my education, my achievements, or my civic involvement, please see my curriculum vitae.
Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River
Robert A. Gilmer
82.3 (Aug. 2016): p720.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River. By Kenna Lang Archer. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. xxvii, 260. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8263-5587-4.)
Kenna Lang Archer's Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River explores the complex history of actual and attempted improvements along the titular Texas river. Archer selected the Brazos as the object of her study because the diversity of its geography and development offers windows into the broader history of water projects throughout the United States. She writes that "the string of projects proposed along the Lower, Middle and Upper Brazos Rivers between 1821 and 1980 speaks not only to the determination of a people committed to the broad idea of development but also to shifting ideas about the shape, form, and purpose of improvement" (p. xix).
Throughout seven chapters organized geographically and chronologically, Archer analyzes how various improvement projects demonstrate what she calls "[a] technocratic conviction" among local boosters and the nation as a whole that rivers could be effectively managed and harnessed for human ends (p. xix). After providing an overview of the natural history of the river and a description of its three primary regions, Archer examines the interplay between regional identity and technological trends in the development of the river. Boosters along different parts of the Brazos promoted schemes that reflected larger regional trends--navigation in the southeastern reaches of the river versus flood control and hydroelectric power in the upper (and western) region. Another major theme is that unlike many other famously developed rivers, most of the projects on the Brazos failed to tame the river. Many became too costly and never delivered the claimed benefits, while others, such as those discussed in chapter 6, were planned but never actually implemented.
One of the real strengths and most fascinating aspects of Unruly Waters is the wide variety of sources used to trace out not only the construction of improvements but also the various ways people conceived of the river, then-relationship to it, and their hopes for a future built on controlling it. While Archer has used government records and promotional pamphlets to discuss the various proposals for and attempts to build improvements, drawing the connection between regional identity and riparian development required a much less straightforward path. In chapter 2 in particular, Archer draws on everything from photographs of prisoners, to plantation-era paintings, to songs to demonstrate how various people have attempted to define the river and the regions it crosses. While the inclusion of some of these primary source images is a valuable addition to the book, the reader would benefit from clearer signposting within the text to alert readers to the presence of those images.
Overall Archer's book makes a fine contribution to the environmental history of an important American river. While the history of developments along the Brazos parallels changes happening throughout the United States, the importance of those parallels could be better highlighted through the inclusion of a broader context within the narrative. While Archer does make the connections, situating the Brazos fully within larger national discussions would emphasize those connections and make the book a more suitable text for readers without background in the history of river development. Still, this short book manages to do quite a lot and will likely be of interest to a variety of readers studying topics as diverse as technology and society, regional identity, and water development projects.
ROBERT A. GILMER
Midlands Technical College
Gilmer, Robert A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gilmer, Robert A. "Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 3, 2016, p. 720+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460447808&it=r&asid=60b2034cb8a3c1eaac0d9208fe1cd8dc. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460447808
Archer, Kenna Lang. Unruly waters: a social and environmental history of the Brazos river
T.P. Bowman
53.2 (Oct. 2015): p305.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Archer, Kenna Lang. Unruly waters: a social and environmental history of the Brazos River. New Mexico, 2015. 260p bibl index ISBN 9780826355874 cloth, $40.00
53-0928
F392
2014-31881
CIP
Archers book is a balanced, comprehensive environmental history of the Brazos River, a waterway first made famous on the national level by John Graves in his 1960 classic, Goodbye to a River. The author surveys the development projects that people living along the Brazos proposed and implemented between 1821 and 1980, showing not only how people engaged in projects of riparian development but also how human control of the Brazos remained somewhat elusive for people living within the watershed. Archer (Angelo State Univ.) comes to four significant conclusions about the river from her well-written and well-researched study. First, floods and droughts shaped the lives and perceptions of people living along the river even after attempts to intervene in nature remade the river itself. Second, the pendulum-like swings between droughts and floods led people to "assume regularly that the river was not quite what it could be" and thus called for continuous human intervention. Third, because of such assumptions, no one questioned the efficacy of improvement. Finally, economic and environmental factors consistently undermined improvement efforts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. A nuanced, compassionate, and intelligent analysis of one of the most important waterways in Texas history. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries.--T. P. Bowman, West Texas A&M University
Bowman, T.P.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bowman, T.P. "Archer, Kenna Lang. Unruly waters: a social and environmental history of the Brazos river." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2015, p. 305+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA431198515&it=r&asid=11635fd8ff319c16859a4053b2db2e4b. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A431198515
Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos Rive
Robert Montgomery · May 27, 2015
By Kenna Lang Archer
Kenna Lang Archer is a history instructor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. She has a Masters Degree in Environmental Science from Baylor University, and a PhD in American History from Texas Tech University. In her book, Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River, Dr. Lang utilizes her expertise in environmental science and history to provide a holistic look at a unique waterway. The Brazos is the longest river within the state of Texas. It flows from the deserts and canyons of northwest Texas— populated by ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans—south through prairies, plantations, and coastal wetlands on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. This trajectory steers the Brazos through the intersection of southern and western geography and culture in the United States. The differing geological realities within the Brazos River basin, and the competing economic and political goals of the people at different points along the river have posed significant challenges to its development since the early 1800s. In Unruly Waters, Dr. Lang chronicles the attempts, and many failures at developing the Brazos River, and the cultural, economic, and technological consequences of those attempts.
Chapter one opens on a group of men during the Civil War tasked with mapping Texas. The group’s analysis of the Brazos River provided the first glimpse of the ecologic, geographic, and cultural diversity along the different sections of the river. Dr. Lang uses this imagery to foreshadow a discussion of the differences between the Upper, Middle, and Lower Brazos River. The distinctions between the three segments of the river are significant to understanding the difficulties each has experienced in development, and how efforts to develop each region has affected the others.
The Lower Brazos River empties into to the Gulf of Mexico after flowing through wetlands, wooded areas, oxbow lakes, and areas of rich fertile soils. The soils around the Lower Brazos are ideal for agricultural production. However, its flat landscapes and fertile, but unstable soils make the region susceptible to flooding. The Middle Brazos River is characterized by a combination of prairie lands and forests. The significant majority of the river’s tributaries empty into the Brazos in this section, which also experiences the largest flows of any segment of the river. While the heavier flow creates an environment with no shortage of water, it also fosters flood risk and creates stretches of rough waters that make navigation difficult. The Upper Brazos River flows through canyon lands and red clay soils. Though located in a more arid climate where drought is common, the rolling topography and steep riverbed walls make the Upper Brazos River tamer, more predictable, and less susceptible to flooding. Consequently, the Upper Brazos has become a popular region for farmers and ranchers.
In chapter two, Dr. Lang highlights the cultural heritage along the different segments of the river in order to set up a discussion of the different development strategies Texans would eventually employ. Since the early 1800s, Texans have immortalized the Brazos in folk tales, songs, photographs, and paintings. Famous artists, laborers, Native Americans, and everyday people have commented through different mediums on the heritage of the region. The lower half of the river basin is most comparable to the landscapes and culture of the Deep South. Early Texans saw the opportunity to maximize economic production by establishing prison farms and utilizing convict labor. At these camps, prisoners sang songs that told stories of work on cotton and sugar plantations. Eventually photographers captured the same stories. Photographs portray the harsh conditions in which they worked, but also show prisoners bathing in the sun or playing sports during their free time.
There is a distinct geographic and demographic shift from the Lower Brazos to the Upper Brazos. Contrary to the Lower Brazos, aspects of American western culture emerge along the Upper Brazos River. The transition manifests itself in artwork and literature that depict beautiful desert scenes and discuss the interactions and activities between American emigrants and Native Americans. Dr. Lang points out that the river is a centerpiece of artistic expression throughout the entire river basin. Through allegory or direct communication, Brazos centric artwork depicted an admiration for the river, but also a frustration over the lack of control of its waters.
In chapter three, Dr. Lang provides a survey of what fostered the original desire to develop the Brazos River, and illustrates why the first undertakings proved cumbersome. Geological factors make the Brazos difficult to develop at every point along the river. The fertile soils of the Lower Brazos River basin attracted immigrants from the United States, Europe and Mexico in the early 19th century. Boosters and politicians knew that if they could make the waterway consistently navigable, it would provide farmers and ranchers access to domestic and foreign markets. However, the region experienced a combination of drought periods and flood seasons that hurt agriculture and create dramatic fluctuations in water levels, rendering navigation difficult and sometimes impossible.
In response, boosters and politicians devised development plans modeled after Southern port cities. Two of the first projects included a 10-mile canal from the Brazos to Galveston (one of the largest ports in Texas), and a series of jetties where the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The goal of these projects was to provide people inland with access to a port, as well as to provide an inland entry point for ships. In both cases, loose soils on the river bottom made finishing and maintaining these projects expensive and time consuming because the waterways required frequent dredging. A combination of rising and falling water levels and soil deposits on the river floor often made navigation possible for only small vessels.
In chapter four, Dr. Lang details the continued determination to render the Brazos navigable. Beginning in 1890 and into the twentieth century, stakeholders shifted their focus to the Middle Brazos River. Instead of dredging the low-lying Lower Brazos, they attempted to implement a series of locks and dams that could calm the river and provide avenues around difficult stretches. Again, natural limitations, including erodible soil and changing elevations, prevented the projects from finishing within their budgets. At the end of the chapter, Dr. Lang emphasizes that failure did not fatigue the stakeholders’ resolve, but it did force them to reflect on their efforts to turn the Brazos into a riparian highway.
Flooding and drought remained the prominent problems in the river basin. The failure of navigation projects spurred a political outcry by 1929 that shifted the focus of development from navigation to flood control. In Chapter 5, Dr. Lang chronicles perhaps the most successful period of development between 1929 and 1958, during which the focus of development shifted from the lower two-thirds of the river to the Upper Brazos River. There, developers envisioned a series of dam projects that more closely resembled development on the Colorado and Tennessee Rivers, rather than Southern-style development like that on the Mississippi.
The dam projects along the Upper Brazos and its tributaries were designed to quell flooding throughout the entire river basin, conserve water for irrigation, reclaim and conserve soil for agriculture, and produce hydroelectric power. The first few projects accomplished these objectives, but also ended up costing much more than originally planned. However, it was not economic considerations that eventually derailed this phase of development, but disagreements over its purposes. Some thought the projects focused too much on energy development, while others argued that they focused on flood control at the expense of hydroelectric power. Additionally, interested stakeholders in the Lower Brazos region were concerned that development on the Upper Brazos would diminish water supplies downstream. Ultimately, political disagreements and limited resources halted several plans for more dam projects.
In chapter six, Dr. Lang discusses the most ambitious of the Brazos River development plans. In the second half of the 20th century, concerns about water supply became a real threat due to an increasing population in West Texas and other areas. In response, national and state politicians proposed a series of importation and diversion schemes. The idea was to take water from areas with a surplus to areas of the country that often experienced shortages. Groups proposed plans that would divert and import water from other major United States waterways to West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, and store the water in underground aquifers. One plan, the Mississippi-Brazos diversion project, proposed developing a North Texas Canal that could transport water from the Mississippi River to West Texas.
None of the diversion plans ever took hold, in part because of the significant costs for the technology and infrastructure necessary to move forward. In addition to technological and monetary challenges, political barriers proved to be the greatest difficulty with these projects. People in the west needed more water, but people in East Texas and people from out of state erected several roadblocks to prevent moving too much water out of their ecosystems.
The final chapter of the book is aptly named, “A Defiant Brazos and the Persistence of its People.” In this chapter, Dr. Lang reflects on over 100 years of attempted development on the Brazos, and identifies several interrelated themes underlying each attempt. The combination of floods and droughts has motivated every development attempt. From the Upper Brazos to the Lower Brazos, problems have spawned great conviction amongst successive generations to improve upon the work of the generation before, but the nature and magnitude of the projects thwarted every attempt. In the end, Dr. Lang determines that the stories of the many attempts at development along the Brazos River are not stories of failure. The stories are about a steadfast conviction that they may eventually optimize conditions, and that the lives of individuals will improve once they employ the right solution.
Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River transcends a discussion of how people utilized technology in an attempt to preserve and perfect water resources in a region. In Unruly Waters, Dr. Lang examines how the Brazos River’s stakeholders have worked together through history to shape the lives of people who live near, develop, and seek to control it. Dr. Lang endeavors to show how politics, innovation, individuals, and community needs have coalesced in a bigger picture. This is not a narrative about how a political machine, or a technological giant conquered, or failed to conquer a stubborn river. Rather, the book presents a sociopolitical analysis of how all of the parties involved are actually interested in the same end: maximizing the safety and utility of a significant waterway.
Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River
By Kenna Lang
Archer
. (Albuquerque
: University of New Mexico Press
, 2015
. xxviii
, 260
pp. $40.00.)
Maria Lane
J Am Hist (2016) 103 (2): 465-466.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw216
Published:
01 September 2016
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Book Reviews
In this slim volume Kenna Lang Archer traces the history of water development schemes for the Brazos River of Texas between 1821 and 1890. Using a wide variety of historical sources—including government documents, media reports, advertisements, and artwork—Archer chronicles various and competing projects that emerged in different times and places along the river.
Although Unruly Waters will be of interest mainly to those who study Texas history, it makes some useful claims about the broader history of American riparian development. Most notably, it argues that although different U.S. regions fostered divergent water development models, they shared a fundamental “technocratic conviction” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (p. xix). This argument is supported through detailed analysis of projects along different sections of the Brazos. The river's bottomlands on the humid Gulf Coast were targeted for navigation projects similar to those common throughout the American South and East, while its upper reaches in arid west Texas were marked for irrigation and flood control, as in other areas of the West. Despite frequent failures in both project approaches, however, Archer finds that boosters continually proposed bigger and more complex projects.
After an introductory chapter that focuses on the physical geography of the Brazos watershed, Archer's second chapter reviews changing cultural depictions of the river over time. She notes that Anglo-American artwork and texts first emphasized the “southern” characteristics of Brazos settlements (for example, manorial homes, cotton fields, slaves, and prison culture) but later shifted to depictions of “western” characteristics (such as cowboys, Indians, and arid landscapes) in tandem with the evolution of different technical approaches to river development drawn from these two regions.
After this overview, the book proceeds more or less chronologically. Chapter 3 describes mid-nineteenth-century projects to improve navigation on the Brazos and cement its place within a transportation network oriented toward commodity markets. Chapter 4 reviews failed Progressive Era lock and dam projects that were envisioned as catalysts for urban reform. Chapter 5 focuses on twentieth-century dam-building plans on the upper Brazos for both irrigation and flood control. Chapter 6 examines large-scale importation and diversion schemes that existed in theory but were never enacted. Chapter 7 summarizes the overall nature of shifting river development approaches along the Brazos, emphasizing that virtually all of the Brazos schemes were founded in a “widespread faith in technological achievement” that was not shaken despite the regularity of natural disasters and of project failure (p. 132).
The primary strength of Unruly Waters is its comprehensive accounting of a multitude of riparian development plans, both successful and failed. Although some of the primary-source evidence is fragmentary, this approach lays bare the remarkable number of development projects and proposals that were attempted to control a single river. Another strength is the attention given to regional distinctions—cultural and technical—between upstream and downstream projects. After commending this attention to detail, however, readers may wish that Archer had gone further in critically explaining the nature of project failure and the logic of boosters' enduring commitment to technological projects. Despite engaging a wealth of historical data, the book often lapses into unsatisfying generalizations that attribute Brazos River development dynamics to an inevitable clash between technocratic ideologies and environmental realities.