Water in North American Environmental History

Martin V. Melosi is Cullen Professor Emeritus of History and Founding Director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston, USA. He studies environmental and urban history and energy history.

2022 John Lyman Book Award honorable mention in the category of "Naval and Maritime Science and Technology":"Teachers offering classes on environmental history, especially of either water or North America, will want to consider adding this book to their syllabi. Alternatively, the book could help hurried and harried instructors who need to give a class lecture or two on topics that appear here. College and university libraries should add it to their collections."J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, USA in Environment and History"There is no dearth of concepts, approaches and research fields in the book...so broad is the range of topics and actors that the book covers that there is nothing much left to be desired. The reader finds a great variety of water bodies, from rivers such as the Rio Grande and the Mississippi, and human infrastructural artefacts like the Spanish colonial irrigation channels (acequias), the Houston Ship Channel and the Erie Canal, to underground sources like the depleting Ogallala aquifer… in Martin Melosi’s magnificent Water in North American History, the ubiquity, the significance, and the multi-faceted nature of water’s ways are amazing."Uwe Lübken, Official Journal of the International Water History Association

• Part I Indigenous Peoples Before Contact 1. The Hohokam: The "Canal Builders" of the American Southwest 2. The Aztecs and the Founding of Tenochtitlan 3. The Inuit, Sea Ice, and Snow Part II Colonialization and Early-Industrial Growth 4. Acequias and Spanish Water Law 5. The Origins of Commercial Fishing in Newfoundland 6. From Waterwheels to Steam Engines Part III Expansionism and Western Settlement 7. The California Gold Rush: Placer and Hydraulic Mining 8. Capricious Border: The Rio Grande River Part IV Commerce, Industry, and Urban Growth 9. Philadelphia’s Waterworks: Pioneering Clean Water for Cities 10. Water Rerouted: The Erie Canal 11. Building the Toronto Waterfront 12. The Lure of Falling Water: Niagara Falls Part V The Mid-Twentieth Century 13. The Houston Ship Channel’s Environmental Footprint 14. "Levees-Only" in Louisiana and The Great Mississippi Flood 15. Salmon, Hydropower, and the Fraser River Part VI The Post-War Years 16. Racism and Civil Rights in American/Canadian Swimming Pools 17. Detergent Phosphates in the Great Lakes 18. The Fluoride Controversy 19. Hurricane Hazel: In Canada Part VII The New Ecology 20. Mexico’s Ixtoc 1 Oil Spill 21. The Ogallala Aquifer in Decline 22. Water Management and Privatization in Modern Mexico Part VIII Social Crises/Environmental Injustices 23. The Flint Water Crisis 24. Maquiladoras and Water Pollution 25. To Frack or Not to Frack in Mexico 26. Postscript: Climate and Water