A Gift of 

 History for 

 Young^tery 



"M out B ecuUifuV' 

 1881 -S Morgan 

 SCh/er Dollar BU 



Why give short-lived toys when 

 this famous frontier-era Morgan 

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 lifetime and remain a valuable 

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 struck Morgan, this lengendary 

 San Francisco issue puts kids in 

 touch with the Wild West and fires 

 their imaginations. Its silver was 

 mined at such fabled Western sites 

 as Comstock and Tombstone . It 

 was a day's pay for hard-working 

 cowboys on the range. Brilliant 

 Uncirculated. Reg. $75. New 

 Customers Only: $35 (#14045). 

 Limit 1 per household. NO 

 "on approval" coins to return. 

 Add $2 total for postage and 

 handling. 30-Day No-Risk Home 

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 62 Ridge St. Dept. 4838 

 Montpelier, VT 05602 



Order at 1-800-451-4463 r— 



www.iaviii.iwl ( many more great deals) 



BOOKSHELF 



By Laurence A. Marschall 



Industrial plants in River Rouge, Michigan, on the banks of the Detroit River 



The Great Lakes Water Wars 

 by Peter Annin 

 Island Press; $25.95 



When I was growing up in Buf- 

 falo, New York, the Great Lakes 

 seemed to me to be a limitless source 

 of water and of wealth. Ah, innocent 

 youth! By the late 1950s the "Sweet 

 Water Seas" to the west of town were 

 turning foul, the freighters were dock- 

 ing less frequently, and the steel and 

 auto plants were starting to close. 

 Buflalonians like me, and our coun- 

 terparts in other soon-to-be "rust belt" 

 cities — Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Erie — 

 were beginning to lose their feeling of 

 security and, in its place, to develop a 

 new environmental anxiety. 



In the decades since, state and lo- 

 cal governments have learned to deal 

 more effectively with sewage and in- 

 dustrial waste — "aided" in part by the 

 continuing loss of heavy industry to 

 other countries. The feeder rivers no 

 longer catch fire, as the Cuyahoga did 

 in downtown Cleveland in 1969, and 

 pollution in the lakes has been reduced. 

 But the 40 million people in the region 

 who depend on Great Lakes water are 



still on edge, understandably worried 

 about what the future will bring. Any 

 threat to the integrity of Great Lakes 

 water touches a raw nerve. 



The greatest fear of the Great Lakes' 

 terrestrial neighbors is that their wa- 

 ters will be stolen outright, diverted 

 to irrigate golf courses in Las Vegas, 

 fill swimming pools in Phoenix, and 

 supply condos in San Diego. That's not 

 sheer paranoia. The driest parts of the 

 nation are also the fastest-growing. 

 And over the years a number of elabo- 

 rate proposals have been floated to get 

 the Great Lakes flowing southwest. 



One project of the 1960s, undoubt- 

 edly named the Great Recycling And 

 Northern Development Canal so to 

 create its grandiose acronym, called 

 for freshwater to be pumped from 

 the Hudson Bay watershed into Lake 

 Huron, then through a series of ca- 

 nals to Montana and Wyoming, and 

 eventually into the Colorado River. 

 From there it would be distributed 

 to nearby urban centers and agribusi- 

 nesses. Public condemnation, and a 

 price tag in the hundreds of billions 

 of dollars, quickly squelched the idea, 

 but it has never completely died. 



Another flurry of worry erupted in 



66 nai urai HISTORY November 2007 



