Overview

In A Doubtful River, photographers Robert Dawson and Peter Goin and essayist Mary Webb explore the ways the Truckee's multifarious users relate to the region's aridity and the precious waters of the river. Dawson's and Goin's eloquent photographs record unforgettable images of the Truckee River's course from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada to desert-bound Pyramid Lake and the ways the river and the land beside it have been used and reshaped by human needs, greed, and carelessness. Webb's essays offer a moving verbal counterpoint, focusing on the people who depend on and adjudicate the river's water. The sum of the elements of this book is a memorable picture of the complexity of water allocation in a region where conflicting traditions about the uses of the land and its resources, a rapidly growing population, and limited supply make water the most precious commodity of all.

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9780874175691

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Reviews

A photographic collaboration between photographers Robert Dawson and Peter Goin with lucid accompanying prose by Mary Webb, this is not an escapist paean to the fragments of wilderness still to be found along the Truckee.... this is one hell of a book, and a valuable addition to the ranks of what seems to be a burgeoning genre: the western coffee-table book with solid writing inside. Any book that shines a spotlight on beautiful, threatened Pyramid Lake - long the step-child just outside of Western environmentalists' field of vision - is worth the asking price. - Chris Clarke, Faultline Magazine; A Doubtful River is a documentary project that has resulted in a beautiful and quite readable book that is of interest to a great many of us and that should be required reading for the residents of Reno and the surrounding region.... Webb's essays are poignant and well written, at times playful and at other times critical. Dawson's and Goin's photographs are, without exception, superb, defining place and the precise moments of place. While doubt about the Truckee's future remains, the craftsmanship of A Doubtful River is without doubt. - Simmons Buntin, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments

Author Information

Winner of the Wilbur S. Shepperson Humanities Book Award, A Doubtful River reveals the uses and abuses of the Truckee River and documents the continual debates over its distribution to meet diverse demands, ultimately asking the question of what will happen to the rapidly dwindling water supply of the arid West? Robert Dawson's and Peter Goin's eloquent photographs record unforgettable images of the Truckee's course from pineclad mountains to the sagebrush-covered vastness of the high desert and the ways the river and the land beside it have been used and reshaped by human needs, greed, and carelessness. Mary Webb's essays offer a moving verbal counterpoint, focusing on the people who depend on and adjudicate the river's water. The sum of the elements of this book is a memorable picture of the complexity of water allocation in a region where conflicting traditions about the uses of the land and its resources, a rapidly growing population, and limited supply make water the most precious commodity of all.

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