Jack L. August Jr.

Dennis DeConcini, a contemporary of Arizona greats like Sandra Day O'Connor, Barry Goldwater, and Rose Mofford, is an Arizona icon in his own right. Starting his public career as the Pima County Attorney, DeConcini orchestrated an unprecedented rise to a seat in the U. S. Senate, which he held for eighteen years. His political memoir, co-authored with historian Jack L. August Jr., reaches beyond typical reflections to provide the reader with penetrating and revealing insights into the inner workings and colorful characters of Arizona politics and the United States Senate. A vigilant centrist, who got results by building coalitions on both sides of the aisle, Senator DeConcini's approach was not bound to strict party alliances but was deeply rooted in the independent political environment of Arizona. During his career, he sponsored legislation limiting the sale of assault weapons, which provoked the National Rifle Association. He confounded Democratic Party regulars by supporting Clarence Thomas during the controversial confirmation hearings and again split with his party in his support for William Rehnquist's nomination to Chief Justice. In 1980 he voted for Ronald Reagan, but in 1993 he cast the swing vote for President Bill Clinton's tax bill, which was strongly opposed by Republicans in Arizona. This political memoir will be of interest to anyone concerned with the inner workings of the U. S. Senate or Arizona politics and offers relevant insights into today's political climate.

Few scholars have contributed as much to the study of the ever dynamic American West as has Jack August Jr., which is why his study of the role played in the growth of Arizona and other Southwestern states by the Snell & Wilmer law practice is such a compelling read. Founded in 1938 by the Arizona immigrants Frank Snell and Mark Wilmer, Snell & Wilmer, along with its clients and civic-minded Arizonans, played an important part in converting a rural backwater into a state that has had a major impact on the political and economic life of the United States. The firm’s founders early on combined the practice of law with the practice of good citizenship, and became important—and some say, dominant—players in the development of Arizona and the Phoenix metropolitan area and, indeed, of the American Southwest. Frank Snell became renowned as one of the foremost civic activists of a growing Phoenix; he lobbied for the construction of major interstate highways and airports worthy of a regional center. Mark Wilmer was known as one of the great trial lawyers of the United States; in the landmark United States Supreme Court case Arizona v. California, Wilmer was critical in making available to Arizona the water necessary to its spectacular growth. August does not limit his study of Snell & Wilmer to its impact on Arizona and the Southwest. With a unique insider’s perspective, August follows the practice’s continued growth even as the legal profession changed over the years, and traces how it adhered to its founding principles while evolving new management structures to cope with economic and technological change. The growth of the firm that has become one of the premier legal firms in the United States and the growth of the Southwest itself are inextricably intertwined.

From the author of Dividing Western Waters comes a book on the development of the arid West--in particular the development of Arizona--as seen through the experiences of three generations of John Ruddle Nortons of Arizona. From the administration of Teddy Roosevelt and the earliest reclamation acts to the monumental case between California and Arizona that would determine how the life-giving waters of the Colorado River would be divided, the Nortons were at the centre of Arizona's development into a vital population and agricultural centre. Pioneers like the Nortons shaped the very landscape of the western United States--a region that would help to supply the United States with cotton, vegetables, and livestock throughout World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The Norton Trilogy follows the lives of John R. Norton (1854-1923) and the beginnings of Arizona farming; John R. Norton, Jr. (1901-1987) and his expansions into diverse crops; and John R. Norton III (1929-present) and the shaping of modern agribusiness as it responded to new water irrigation policies. As the author points out, ""Several themes run through The Norton Trilogy: the most important is the interplay between human values and the waterscape. Technology, of course, played a monumental role in this drama, for dynamite, bulldozers, and reinforced concrete impacted the region's water and shaped the agricultural economy more than any Indian's digging stick. Another theme is the central role played by government--local, state, regional, and national--in shaping water policies. The biographical profiles of each John Norton addressed in this work reveal much about the history of Arizona and the central role that the quest for water has played in the growth and development of the region."" Although the book focuses largely on the state of Arizona, and specifically on one Arizonan family, the story is a template of the hardworking American ideal. Senator John Kyl, a colleague of John Norton III, writes in the foreword, “The Nortons, who never suffered from lack of a work ethic, have made Arizona and the nation a better place. This book is as much an American story as it is an Arizona one.” Readers everywhere will be captivated by the generation-to-generation struggles of a family business and how these failures and successes are affected by interstate politics and public policy.