Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-electricity during Canada's Second World War, Matthew Evenden. University of Toronto Press, Toronto (2015). 273 pages, US $32.95 paperback.

摘要: Tracing the historical transformation of the world's river systems through the construction of large-scale infrastructure is a critical task of scholarship in the 21st century. Yet this scholarship remains remarkably incomplete. Of the world's roughly 50,000 large dams—nearly all built solely or partially for the generation of electric power—only a curiously small number have to date received the attention of historians, geographers, biophysical scientists, and environmental activists concerned with these projects' often significant socioecological impacts. Thankfully, works such as Matthew Evenden's Allied Power are beginning to quite exceptionally fill in our historical blind spots. The book traces the shifting political-economic conditions in Canada in the years leading up to and encompassing World War II that played a major role in expanding hydropower development and altering rivers across a broad swathe of Canadian …