"William Mulholland was a famed and infamous water and civil engineer, best known for two extraordinary moments in the environmental history of California, one a colossal success, the other an equally stunning failure. The first is the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the second is the building of the fated St. Francis Dam, which came crashing down in 1928. Catherine Mulholland deals with her grandfather's alpha and omega moments dispassionately and in detail. But in between those events are more than a decade in the life of the great engineer and potential politician, and we gain a rich profile of the entire era here. This is a richly detailed, well-written life of a critical figure in the history of Los Angeles and the modern American West. It is an important contribution."--William Deverell, author of Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad