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John Wesley Powell: His Life and Legacy
“John Wesley explorer, writer, geologist, anthropologist, land planner, bureaucrat. Which one do we focus on?” This is the question author James M. Aton poses at the beginning of his biography of Powell, though he soon decides that it is impossible to ignore any facet of Powell’s life. Powell was a polymath, one whose “divergent interests resemble one of those braided streambeds in his beloved canyon country, branching out in many directions, but ultimately beginning and ending in the same stream." Aton beautifully tells the multidimensional stories of Powell’s childhood, his military and teaching careers, his famous and exciting explorations of the Colorado River, and the battles he waged from his influential positions within the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology and the United States Geological Survey. This new edition of John Wesley His Life and Legacy, first printed as an issue of the Boise State University Western Writers Series, includes the original biography, but also features Aton’s new interpretations of Powell’s writings on exploration, land-planning, anthropology, and irrigation, and incorporates the author’s distinguished faculty lecture on Powell and cash-register dams in the Colorado River Basin.
- GenresBiography
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 29, 2022
Book 18 of 2022: Powell - His Life and Legacy by James M. Aton (2010, Bonneville Books, 85 p.)
Wayne read yet another book on JWP!
This is a relatively short book of 70 readable pages consisting of 4 sections - a biography of the Major, two chapters on literary analysis of Powell's writings, and a short epilog.
The biography is fairly straightforward and is a nice overview of Powell's life. The meat of this book are the two literary analyses of his exploration/ethnography/land use and irrigation. I found it interesting that Aton described Powell's writings on his Colorado River exploration into the Joseph Campbell "hero" narrative.
The chapter on his irrigation writings (centered on Powell's Arid Land report) outlined how people have formed Powell in their own image. Powell was not likely to be the developer nor the environmentalist that some authors have presented him as. For instance, there are those who decry Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, indicating that Powell is rolling over in his grave over the reservoir being named for him. In all likelihood, if Powell's ideas on irrigation and water development had come to fruition, the Colorado River would have been dry - all the water would be captured by farmers for irrigation.
This book added to my knowledge and understanding of Powell's work by examining the literary aspects of his written work and how he influenced our present day culture...for good or for bad.
Recommended.
Wayne read yet another book on JWP!
This is a relatively short book of 70 readable pages consisting of 4 sections - a biography of the Major, two chapters on literary analysis of Powell's writings, and a short epilog.
The biography is fairly straightforward and is a nice overview of Powell's life. The meat of this book are the two literary analyses of his exploration/ethnography/land use and irrigation. I found it interesting that Aton described Powell's writings on his Colorado River exploration into the Joseph Campbell "hero" narrative.
The chapter on his irrigation writings (centered on Powell's Arid Land report) outlined how people have formed Powell in their own image. Powell was not likely to be the developer nor the environmentalist that some authors have presented him as. For instance, there are those who decry Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, indicating that Powell is rolling over in his grave over the reservoir being named for him. In all likelihood, if Powell's ideas on irrigation and water development had come to fruition, the Colorado River would have been dry - all the water would be captured by farmers for irrigation.
This book added to my knowledge and understanding of Powell's work by examining the literary aspects of his written work and how he influenced our present day culture...for good or for bad.
Recommended.
January 2, 2023
A pretty slim volume, but a solid entry into JWP historiography. An examination of the man and his ideas. Chapter 3 tries to answer the question of how Powell would feel about the reservoir named after him.
July 8, 2013
Interesting short book on Powell and his relation to environmentalism. I need to read more about him, but I could not get into the Stegner book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews