Steven Hawley

In the 1960s, at the height of the Space Race, a young boy named Steven Hawley dreamed of getting close to the stars. But with the odds stacked against him to become an astronaut, he dove deep into a study of telescopes and astronomy, never thinking he'd be one of the few who would get to fly in space. Hawley earned his big break in 1977, seizing the opportunity to apply to the NASA recruitment initiative that would famously offer the first women, people of color, and non-pilots a position aboard the Space Shuttle. As a member of the cohort called "the Thirty-Five New Guys," Hawley ascended from civilian PhD candidate to Astronaut alongside the likes of Robert "Hoot" Gibson, Ellison Onizuka, Guion Bluford, and Sally Ride, whom he would later marry. Among a long list of achievements over a thirty-year career at NASA, Astronaut Hawley oversaw the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, managed the joint missions between NASA and Russia that led to the development of the International Space Station (ISS), and investigated the causes of the Columbia re-entry disaster of 2003. He was the first non-pilot to hold the position of Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. Told in his own words, Eyes to the Stars is the story of a civilian scientist-turned-spaceman, a tale of groundbreaking discovery and death-defying bravery standing next to some of the greatest explorers in the history of the American space program.

The ugly truth about dams is about to be revealed. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the whole messy truth about the legacy of last century’s big dam building binge has come to light. What started out as an arguably good government project has drifted oceans away from that original virtuous intent. Governments plugged the nation’s rivers in a misguided attempt to turn them into revenue streams. Water control projects’ main legacy will be one of needless ecological destruction, fostering a host of unnecessary injustices. The estimated 800,000 dams in the world can’t be blamed for destroying the earth’s entire biological inheritance, but they play an outsized role in that destruction. Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Crazy World is a kind of speed date with the history of water control -- its dams, diversions and canals, and just as importantly, the politics and power that evolved with them. Examples from the American West reveal that the costs of building and maintaining a sprawling water storage and delivery complex in an arid world—growing increasingly arid under the ravages of climate chaos—is well beyond the benefits furnished. Success stories from Patagonia and the Blue Heart of Europe point to a possible future where rivers run free and the earth restores itself.

A powerful argument for why dam removal makes good scientific, economic, and environmental sense--and requires our urgent attention In the Pacific Northwest, the Snake River and its wilderness tributaries were once some of the world's greatest salmon rivers. As recently as a half century ago, they retained some of their historic bounty, with millions of fish returning to spawn. Now, due to four federal dams, the salmon population has dropped close to extinction. Efforts at salmon recovery through fish ladders, hatcheries, and even trucking them over the dams have failed. Steven Hawley, journalist and self-proclaimed "river rat," argues that the best hope for the Snake River lies in dam removal, a solution that pits the power authorities and Army Corps of Engineers against a collection of Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen, and river recreationists. The river's health, as he demonstrates, is closely connected to local economies, fresh water rights, energy independence--and even the health of orca whales in Puget Sound. The story of the Snake River, its salmon, and its people raises the fundamental questions of who should exercise control over natural resources and which interests should receive highest priority. It also offers surprising counterpoints to the notion of hydropower as a cheap, green, and reliable source of energy, and challenges the wisdom of heavily subsidized water and electricity. This regional battle is part of an ambitious river restoration movement that stretches across the country from Maine's Kennebec to California's Klamath, and engages citizens from a broad social spectrum. In one successful project, the salmon of Butte Creek rebounded from a paltry fourteen fish to twenty thousand within just a few years of rewilding their river, showing the incredible resiliency of nature when given the slightest chance. "Recovering a Lost River" depicts the compelling arguments and actions being made on behalf of salmon by a growing army of river warriors. Their message, persistent but disarmingly simple, is that all salmon need is water in their rivers, and a clear way home. "From the Hardcover edition."