NONFICTION | AVAILABLE AUGUST 2024
LIFE AFTER DEAD POOL: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River
by ZAK PODMORE
"An invaluable chapter in the history of the Colorado River."
—DAVID EVERETT, Back of Beyond Books
Since it began filling in 1963, Lake Powell has been central to water management in the western US. But now, after decades of drought, the Colorado River has been stretched to the breaking point. Due to a changing climate and design flaws in the Glen Canyon Dam, this once-massive reservoir is on the brink of collapse—leaving the millions of people who depend on its waters at risk. Podmore explores the challenges ahead with a focus on the bright side of the water crisis: the surprising ecological rebirth that's already unfolding in Glen Canyon.
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Through clear science writing and lyrical prose, Life After Dead Pool debunks the notion that the West's water challenges are unsolvable and invites us to secure a future where Glen Canyon returns in its wild glory and the Colorado River once again runs free.
August 2024 | Nonfiction | 9798890920027 | 280 pp | $30.00
“Anyone who cherishes the great wild canyons of the West—Glen Canyon and all the rest—may take solace, and insight, and maybe even hope from this fascinating account of how climate change and drought are forcing a radical reimagining of western water management. The good news, as Zak Podmore reminds us, is that, despite human doltishness, nature abides.”
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—DAVID QUAMMEN, New York Times bestselling author of Spillover and The Heartbeat of the Wild
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ZAK PODMORE is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about water and conservation issues in the western United States. He is the author of Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West and his work has appeared in Outside, USA Today, National Geographic Traveler, and elsewhere. He lives in Bluff, Utah.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
CONFLUENCE: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West
After losing his river-running mother to cancer, author and paddler Zak Podmore disappears into the American West’s iconic canyon country to heal. What he finds is a wilderness infused with personal stories, as well as a landscape strained by political, environmental, and cultural tensions. A trip down the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park leads to a confrontation with US immigration policy. While canoeing down a rare release of water in the Colorado River delta, Podmore questions the economic foundations of Western water management. He reports on uranium tailings near the San Juan River, dam removals on Washington’s Elwha River, and a tourist development in the Grand Canyon. Moving and provocative, Confluence follows in the tradition of Thoreau or Edward Abbey — it takes us into the wild but always has one eye turned back toward the blessings and ills of civilization.
“Zak Podmore has written a book of promise: a promise that beauty matters; a promise that history lives through us; a promise that the Colorado River teaches us about life and death and the depth of both.”
—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, Erosion
PRAISE FOR LIFE AFTER DEAD POOL
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“At once personal and immaculately reported, Life After Dead Pool sidesteps the nostalgia and cliches of writing about ‘Lake Foul,’ giving us the joys of the place along with the grumbles. As long-buried canyons emerge and flower with native plants, Zak Podmore offers a plan that is both visionary and practical on how the Colorado River can, once again, redeem the region.”
—DAVID GESSNER, New York Times bestselling author of All the Wild that Remains and A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World
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“While water may be one of the West’s most intractable issues, intrepid journalist Zak Podmore offers us a hopeful and practical solution, shared from the seat of his kayak on a years-long journey through a dying reservoir. Around every bend is more proof of a new paradigm as Podmore interviews a host of experts, shares a fascinating history and bears witness to a robust natural ecosystem that is miraculously emerging from the depths of what was considered one of the worst environmental crimes of the twentieth century.”
—ANNETTE MCGIVNEY, author of Pure Land and Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West
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“In Life After Dead Pool, Zak Podmore gives a detailed and compelling account of the origins of the Indigenous peoples in what would come to be known as the Colorado River Basin—and guides us through the present-day social and political terrain of a rapidly dwindling Lake Powell. By taking us deep into lost and reemerging landscapes of Glen Canyon, Podmore deepens our understanding and calls us to action to protect the greatest resource we have in the desert—water”
—CALVIN CROSBY, The King’s English Bookshop
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“An invaluable chapter in the history book of the Colorado River, Zak’s ability to cut through the lithifying layers of water policy, transnational politics, and climate change science resonates on every page. If you thought Cadillac Desert was a Cassandra of its time, you will love this book as he maps out a very real path forward for the Colorado River ecosystem in Glen Canyon in this thoroughly researched journal of his time in God’s Navel. This journey is both personal and ecosystem sized and you can’t help but wish you were with Zak for those campfire conversations as he and his merry band of latter day save-the-place provocateurs go deep into the wilderness of the Colorado Plateau - and their own minds.”
—DAVID EVERITT, Back of Beyond Books
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“Zak Podmore explores a future without Glen Canyon Dam through the lens of a journalist and the soul of an adventurer. The future of water management in the West starts with asking tough questions, and Podmore investigates the issue’s centerpiece.”
—MORGAN SJOGREN, author of Path of Light
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