Before the Flood: Destruction, Community, and Survival in the Drowned Towns of the Quabbin

In the tradition of Silent Spring, a modern parable of the American experience and our paradoxical relationship with the natural world.

Though it seems a part of the "natural" landscape of New England today, the Swift River Valley reservoir, dam, dike, and nature area was a triumph of civil engineering. It combined forward-looking environmental stewardship and social policy, yet the “little people”—and the four towns in which they lived—got lost along the way. Elisabeth Rosenberg has crafte...