August's Book of the Month is this wonderful book by Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. This isn't necessarily a science book, as my other books of the month have been, but there is a good deal of information (and history) to be gleaned from this text. Reisner does include some of the science in here, but this book is more about how the American government handles (or mishandles) things, in this case, how water in the American West is used. In this book, you'll find colorful characters, and all of them are real people (or were). I have to say that they are real, because some of them (like Floyd Dominy) seem too outrageous to be real, but indeed they are. You'll see how dams and water projects are built, even if there isn't a reason for them to be built. You will learn how California is stealing most of the usable water in the West, and still wants more. Amidst scandals, wars, public outcry and national disaster, you'll see how the West was watered.