"This is the first full-scale look at LBL, which has been managed by the TVA since its beginning. In part environmental history, this book focuses on public policy issues and the successes and failures of New Deal and then Great Society programs and concentrates fairly intensively on public planning"--

"They had been told their sacrifice was for the public good. They were never told how much they would miss it, or for how long." Drowned Town explores the multigenerational impact caused by the loss of home and illuminates the joys and sorrows of a group of people bound together by western Kentucky's Land Between the Lakes and the lakes that lie on either side of it. The linked stories are rooted in a landscape forever altered by the mid-twentieth-century impoundment of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers and the seizing of property under the power of eminent domain to create a national recreation area on the narrow strip of land between the lakes. The massive federal land and water projects completed in quick succession were designed to serve the public interest by providing hydroelectric power, flood control, and economic progress for the region—at great sacrifice for those who gave up their homes, livelihoods, towns, and history. The narrative follows two women whose lives are shaped by their friendship and connection to the place, and their stories go back and forth in time to show how the creation of the lakes both healed and hurt the people connected to them. In the process, the stories emphasize the importance of sisterhood and family, both blood and created, and how we cannot separate ourselves from our places in the world.

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.