Water to the Angels

The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever createdWilliam Mulholland's Los Angeles aqueducta story of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man who's vision shaped the future and continues to impact us today.

In 1907, Irish immigrant William Mulholland conceived and built one of the greatest civil engineering feats in history: the aqueduct that carried water 223 miles from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Los Angelesallowing this small, resource-challenged desert city to grow into a modern global metropolis. Drawing on new research, Les Standiford vividly captures the larger-then-life engineer and the breathtaking scope of his six-year, $23 million project that would transform a region, a state, and a nation at the dawn of its greatest century.

With energy and colorful detail, Water to the Angels brings to life the personalities, politics, and powerincluding bribery, deception, force, and bicoastal financial warfarebehind this dramatic event. At a time when the importance of water is being recognized as never beforeconsidered by many experts to be the essential resource of the twenty-first centuryWater to the Angels brings into focus the vigor of a fabled era, the might of a larger than life individual, and the scale of a priceless construction project, and sheds critical light on a past that offers insights for our future.

Water to the Angels includes 8 pages of photographs.

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