When Henry David Thoreau went for his daily walk, he would consult his instincts on which direction to follow. More often than not his inner compass pointed west or southwest. "The future lies that way to me," he explained, "and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side." In his own imaginative way, Thoreau was imitating the countless young pioneers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs who were zealously following Horace Greeley's famous advice to "go west." Yet while the epic chapter in American history opened by these adventurous men and women is filled with stories of frontier hardship, we rarely think of one of their greatest problems--the lack of water resources. And the same difficulty that made life so troublesome for early settlers remains one of the most pressing concerns in the western states of the late-twentieth century. The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality. Rivers of Empire represents a radically new vision of the American West and its historical significance. Showing how ecological change is inextricably intertwined with social evolution, and reevaluating the old mythic and celebratory approach to the development of the West, Worster offers the most probing, critical analysis of the region to date. He shows how the vast region encompassing our western states, while founded essentially as colonies, have since become the true seat of the American "Empire." How this imperial West rose out of desert, how it altered the course of nature there, and what it has meant for Thoreau's (and our own) mythic search for freedom and the American Dream, are the central themes of this eloquent and thought-provoking story--a story that begins and ends with water.

唐納德·沃斯特（1941— ），環境史學的創始人與領軍人物之一，美國堪薩斯大學霍爾榮譽教授（榮休），中國人民大學海外高層次文教專傢，美國人文與科學學院院士。沃斯特曾擔任美國環境史學會主席和美國西部史學會主席，曾獲美國曆史學會終生成就奬、美國環境史學會終身成就奬、美國西部史學會終身成就奬、保護生態協會傑齣貢獻奬。主要著作包括：《自然的經濟體係：生態思想史》、《塵暴：1930年代的美國南部大平原》、《帝國之河：水、乾旱與美國西部的成長》、《自然的財富》、《在西部的天空下》、《地球的終點》、《嚮西奔騰的河流：約翰·衛斯理·鮑威爾的一生》、《熱愛自然：約翰·繆爾的一生》、《萎縮的地球：亞美利加自然豐裕的興衰》。其著作獲奬無數，包括美國曆史學最高奬班剋羅夫特奬、蘇格蘭文學最高奬、英語語言聯盟最佳傳記奬，並多次獲普利策奬提名。