I just finished Where the Water Goes, by David Owen. He gets a little rambly at times, but overall it’s a great look at the history of water use and development in the western US as seen through the lens of the Colorado River. The author chronicles several road trips he takes to follow the entire length of the river and several tributaries, and he weaves in a great amount of history along the way.
I particularly enjoyed the part about Arizona’s governor sending out the National Guard to prevent construction workers from accessing the East bank while trying to start building Hoover Dam. He also appointed someone to be the admiral of the Arizona Navy so that she could harass them in boats.
Ultimately it’s a story about just how fucked we all are, but I really enjoyed it and the specificity of why.
It’s also what the phone number club card has been about for the past few decades. I still type in the public phone number for my local store every time (after noticing that’s what the clerk used one time when I was “having trouble” entering my number on the pin pad). Grocery app on my phone? Hell no.