Water to the Angels

The story of William Mulholland's Los Angeles aqueduct, the largest public water project ever created—a tale of gilded age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man whose vision shaped the futureIn 1907, Irish immigrant William Mulholland designed and began to build one of the greatest civil engineering feats in history: the aqueduct that carried water 233 miles from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles—allowing this small, resource-challenged desert city to grow into a modern global metropolis. Drawing on new research, Les Standiford vividly captures the visionary engineer and the breathtaking scope of his six-year, $23 million project that would transform a region, a state, and a nation at the dawn of its greatest century. At a time when the importance of water is being recognized as never before, Water to the Angels brings into focus the vigor of a fabled era, the might of a larger-than-life individual, and the scale of a priceless construction project, shedding critical light on a past that offers insights for our future.