Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest

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Description

In 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 p

Reviews

Winner of the 2016 George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History Winner of the 2015 Caughey Western History Prize, Western History Association Winner of a 2015 Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association Winner of the 2015 David J. Weber-Clements Prize, Western History Association Winner of the 2015 Hal K. Rothman Prize, Western History Association "Power Lines is an important contribution to urban, environmental, and western history."--Adam Rome, Journal of American History "A complex and provocative analysis."--Julie Cohn, Environmental History "Needham's disciplined focus on the mechanisms of power in the modern Southwest does much to clarify the origins of modern America--and to demonstrate the utter centrality of indigenous people to that story."--James Rice, AlterNative "Needham's work is remarkable in its ability to draw together a range of actors, sites, scales, and technologies involved in the uneven development of not just Phoenix or the Navajo, but the entire Southwest. By making these connections visible, Power Lines is an important piece of scholarship for those interested in how energy, and electricity in particular, shapes the lives of people located in very different, yet connected, locations."--Conor Harrison, Planning Perspectives "[A] tremendous accomplishment. By weaving together a swarm of previously disconnected histories and historiographies, Power Lines offers a bracing new perspective on energy, development, politics, and protest in the modern Southwest."--Thomas G. Andrews, Western Historical Quarterly "A remarkably complex, sophisticated look at the causes and consequences of metropolitan growth in the American Southwest in the mid-twentieth century... Power Lines achieves a very impressive, relatively concise synthesis of the expansion of the use of electricity in Phoenix in the mid-twentieth century while at the same time introducing original research."--Ben Ford, H-Net Reviews

Author Bio

Andrew Needham is associate professor of history at New York University.