The Big Rivers

Cooperation is crucial for those along the mighty rivers of the MidwestThe rivers that make up the great saucer of the Midwest that is the Mississippi Basin flow in from thirty-one states and parts of Canada. Where so much water comes together in one place, floods are inevitable. But before settlers moved there and built cities and farms, the water simply spilled out onto the plain. Now there are dams and levees to control the rivers’ flow. In this combination of history, geography and science, Bruce Hiscock tells of the great flood of 1993 along the upper Mississippi River, and in words and pictures he shows what a river basin is, how it works as part of the water cycle, and what happened that spring that made the system of dams and levees fail.