Nearly 50 years ago the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building a dam in Central Arizona, the dam would bring valuable water to the arid plain but it would also destroy a wildlife habitat, flood archaeological sites and force the Yavapai Indians off their ancestral home. The three groups most involved with the Orme Dam found themselves and their values transformed by their struggles and the text examines the relations between interests and identities that emerged during the conflict, creating a contemporary tale of power and colonization, bureaucracies and democratic practice and asks the question of what it means to be "rational".