After two decades, Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden returned to his small-townbirthplace in the Pacific Northwest to follow the rise and fall of the West'smost thoroughly conquered river. To explore the Columbia River and befriendthose who collaborated in its destruction, he traveled on a monstrous freightbarge sailing west from Idaho to the Grand Coulee Dam, the site of the river'sharnessing for the sake of jobs, electricity, and irrigation. A River Lost is a searing personal narrative of rediscovery joinedwith a narrative of exploitation: of Native Americans, of endangered salmon, ofnuclear waste, and of a once-wild river. Updated throughout, this editionfeatures a new foreword and afterword.