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

by Elisabeth C. Rosenberg

Overview

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 crafted Before the Flood to be both a modern and a universal story in a time when managed retreat will one day be a reality. 

Meticulously researched, Before the Flood, is the first narrative book on the incredible history of the Swift River Valley and the origins Quabbin Reservoir. Rosenberg dive into the socioeconomic and psychological aspects of the Swift River Valley’s destruction in order to supply drinking water for the growing populations of Boston and wider Massachusetts.

It is as much a human story as the story of water and landscape, and Before the Flood movingly reveals both the stories and the science of the key players and the four flooded towns that were washed forever away.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643136455
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Elisabeth C. Rosenberg is a writer and editor who focuses on the interplay between individuals, demographic groups, and disruptive technology. She has contributed to The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Fast Company, Harvard University Press, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. She divides her time between Washington, DC, and Amherst, MA.

Editorial Reviews

06/21/2021

Historian Rosenberg debuts with a granular chronicle of how four Massachusetts towns were leveled in the 1930s in order to create the Quabbin Reservoir, which provides water to Boston. Seeking to challenge “binary” histories of the event, which cast townspeople as the “losers” and state government officials and Boston residents as the “victors,” Rosenberg spotlights the engineers, many of them recent college graduates, who lived in the towns and became active community members, even as they plotted “the death of the Swift River Valley.” She uncovers the mutual respect that grew between the engineers and townspeople during the course of the 15-year project, but gets bogged down in the minutia of marriages, school board meetings, and other small-town social events. As a result, her accounts of the legislative battles leading up to the flooding, the history of Boston’s water shortages, and the work done to dig diversion tunnels, clear cut the land, and raze and burn the buildings, are obscured by details intended to personalize the engineers. Though she claims that “the story of Quabbin is a parable of everything that has gone, and continues to go wrong—and sometimes right—with American public works planning,” and that its lessons should be studied by today’s policymakers, who must plan for “more water-based human displacement” caused by climate change, Rosenberg doesn’t quite bring these intriguing points home. This well-intentioned history has a muddled message. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Elisabeth C. Rosenberg does a masterful job turning a potentially dry story into anything but. From the first page, you’ll find yourself caring deeply about the citizens of Enfield, Dana, Greenwich and Prescott and their fates. Simply a terrific read. As Rosenberg points out, if climate change worsens, and we find ourselves in need of water, we may need to make similar choices. The book is about a forgotten chapter in American history, but it just may be a cautionary tale.

Geoff Williams