Glen Canyon before Lake Powell is at once a beautiful and tragic book. It consists of a collection of photographs--mostly color--of the landscape now hidden beneath the eerie turquoise waters of Lake Powell, a vast man-made reservoir on the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border. Editor Eleanor Inskip has skillfully paired each photograph with quotations from those who knew Glen Canyon before the water began to rise on that fateful day in January 1963. Explorers, river runners, popular writers, archaeologists, historians, and environmentalists all find a voice in this extraordinary collection, but the work's greatest strength is nevertheless its images.

The book is neither strident nor moralizing in tone. Instead, a sense of quiet grief pervades. The photographs speak for themselves, as do the observations so eloquently captured in the accompanying quotations. In the end, the questions raised are unspoken but obvious: Who are we to decide the fate of an organism so alive and so vital as a river? What have we lost in our relentless quest for the "good life?" And can it in fact be a "good life" with the waters of the Colorado stilled? Inskip respects her readers enough to let them judge for themselves.

Admirers of Eliot Porter's famous The Place No One Knew, now out of print, will find this to be an appropriate companion volume. Very highly recommended.

Through carefully chosen photographs and comments of people who experienced Glen Canyon before it was inundated by Lake Powell, Inskip presents a moving portrait of sinuous sandstone channels, lush microclimates, and the favorite beaches we will never again view.

Although this book does not go into great depth about the subject, it is well written and will leave the reader longing to make a trip to the lake. The author presents the controversy about the damn in a well balanced manner and keeps the focus of the book on the existing treasures of the lake.

This is the best book ever written about this subject. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the beauty and history of Utah.

I read Dellenbaugh's reprinted "Canyon Voyage" (the much abbreviated title) as a young man in the flatlands of western Kansas in the 1960's. The romance of the period of Dellenbaugh's youth, and the Powell Expeditions in particular (1869-72), stimulated in me an ongoing interest in the history of the region. I have read the edited and published diaries of most of the participants of the two expeditions, and continue to invest in an array of scholarly and coffee table books that even remotely address the subject. My annual crossings of the Colorado and Dirty Devil rivers to pursue research interests in southeastern Utah never fail to regenerate my own wish to have participated in such an epic adventure. Thus, when I saw the notice of publication of Maurer's book about Dellenbaugh on the second Powell expedition, with the expression in the title "the true adventures," I was expecting something on the order of D.D. Fowler's book about Jack Hiller's, another expedition participant. That is, a pretty serious biography of the man and a pretty faithful reproduction of the daily diary kept during his time in the field. Well, it might be the former, but it is certainly not the latter. Unlike the other expeditioners who kept diaries, Dellenbaugh's original diary has never been published. Perhaps this is because his 1908 "Canyon Voyage" was a timeline-based (albeit compressed) narrative and researchers may have believed there was nothing more of value in the original diary. While Maurer read the diaries of all the participants, including Dellenbaugh's, as well as Dellenbaugh's "Canyon Voyage" and the earlier "Romance of the Colorado River," Maurer's timeline is even more compressed than Dellenbaugh's. Consequently the book lacks the rich detail of Dellenbaugh's diary and earlier publications. For example, unlike the present book, the consecutive daily diary entries of "Looked for the Major today but of course he did not come; carried the rations over," "Looked for the Major again," and "Still waiting,"conveys a real sense of frustration at being in the same camp, on the bank of the Colorado, day after day, laying up under a boat to avoid the oppressive August heat, with nothing to do, waiting for the Major and Prof to come in so the party can continue the trip down the river through the Grand Canyon. Maurer acknowledged that in the writing of the book he "sometimes resorted to the methods of historical fiction to flesh out some of the stories" and that "footnotes would be out of place in a book like this." Thus despite having the best possible materials at hand from which to draw, this book was never intended as a scholarly work. In that context, the writing was a success. Maurer did locate some great historical photographs and drawings not published elsewhere, and that alone is an important contribution. More than that, though, the book was a really entertaining read. I can well imagine some person, like me once, never having heard of either Powell or Dellenbaugh, picking up the book and just marveling at what they did. And, interest aroused, they have an avocation.

Richard Maurer's new book chronicles Powell's second expedition through the eyes, words, and illustrations of Fred Dellenbaugh - a 17-year-old boy from Buffalo, NY who, along with some rowing experience on the turbulent Niagara River and a facility for drawing, had the gumption to make his dream come true. This story is very well written and quite compelling and will appeal to those who love adventure stories set in the Old West. The photographs and illustrations are remarkable. My hats off to the author!

all titles on eco of Lake Powell should be noted there are activists seeking to REMOVE the dam! See E Magazine, Sierra Club on Dave Foreman, earth first

Hirsch does a great job of whetting my appetite to get to Lake Powell. The explanation of the whole process of renting and operating a house-boat is just what I was looking for! I wish he had included a little more detail about communications with marine radio and cell phones, and he could have just gone into more detail in every chapter. I appreciate the expense he went to in the colored pictures. Overall very satisfied! I would recommend it as a resource to anyone headed to Lake Powell!

Color photos,1st class Adventure,Scarce & Hard to Find,"Planet of the Ape"filmed at this location.

This book tells you everything to bring and everything not to. I haven't even gone on the trip yet, but all my friends have already bought their copy and read it cover to cover. Bob, if you read this, thank you for being so clever yet informative. The pictures in this book and breathtaking!

This book is well written and enjoyable. It presents the case from those that wish to drain Lake Powell but is does so quite fairly and does give decent coverage to the pros of Lake Powell and and the access and beauty created by the massive Glen Canyon Dam.

Perhaps Mr Farmer angered more than he pleased but that usually shows that he is not completely one one side or the other.

A worthwhile read.

Biases first: I'm a rabid "drain the lake"er.

Still, one's arguments can only benefit from an effective challenge, and Farmer provides this in spades. An impassioned environmentalist, Farmer nonetheless points out that artificial environments are pretty much what we live in, and that if we look only to "untrammeled wilderness" as the source of our connection with nature, we're likely to run out of that wilderness in short order.

This book is an effective history of Glen Canyon, but it's also a critical analysis of wilderness tourism in the whole of Southern Utah, and a cogent deconstruction of our attitudes toward built versus natural landscapes. And unlike many such tomes (Stephen Pyne's valuable if turgid How the Canyon Became Grand comes to mind) Farmer writes his critique in a personable, approachable voice. It's rare to see a capable writer approach such a multifaceted subject without fear of using the first person singular pronoun. Eminently readable.

I wanted a houseboating guide to Lake Powell. Although this book is full of detail about every inch of the lake, it is absolutely NOT user-friendly. The print is minute and the writing is atrocious. All of the maps are small and cluttered, and look as if they were done on somebody's home PC. All of the references are metric, which makes it extremely tedious to decipher. Although there is a metric conversion table at the begining, it was very frustrating to have to keep refering back to it. If you are looking for a basic, easy to follow guide, this is not the book for you! If I had picked it up in a book store and thumbed through it, I never would have bought it.

Overall this isn't a bad book. However, I do agree with other reviewers who feel it is difficult to use. Mr. Kelsey is an avid hiker and outdoorsman. The hikes in this book are all pretty intense and not for your average person. My major complaint about the book is that terrain at the beginning of most of the hikes up from the lake shore varies greatly depending on the water level. I know that this isn't Mr. Kelsey's fault and I certainly don't blame him, but he could give you a little warning. When we went (early May 2001) the water level was about 27 feet below full pool. At that point the beginning of some of his hikes may actually be 1/2 kilometer earlier than he states. In addition, getting to his starting point may be a whole lot more involved. (On one hike, it took us over an hour just to get to where he had the hike starting, due to low water level, lots of mud which was almost like quicksand and the need to hike up slickrock to get around all this).

We've used all 3 editions on 4 houseboat trips. From the descriptions of what to see, we decide on which canyons to visit. We use the detailed maps to navigate to the beach campsites. We use the trail descriptions to reach arches, waterfalls, petroglyphs, pictographs, ruins and narrow slot canyons. Things we used from the latest edition: new cost and time info on famous Antelope Canyon, more detailed directions on locating the petroglyphs in Llewellyn Gulch, and new info on upper West (slot) Canyon. I recommend this Guide to anyone boating on Lake Powell. Not recommended for extremists who want to drain the lake!