I don't know a lot about the Southwest so was very interested in this book's central theme (that the SW was the one part of the US that was built on electricity) and the combination of urban, indigenous, and business history of how all of that electricity got produced and linked to the millions of new homes built in the region after WWII. Some of the details of utility company competition is pretty dry but worth the read

Fascinating look at metropolitan and regional growth and what they mean in the American southwest. The history here roots the story of Phoenix's 20th-century rise in its larger environmental and political ecology. Kicking myself a bit for picking up something this academic (along with some big heavy literary fiction, my timing is truly lousy lately) just as the weather is shifting to porch-drinking reading times, but glad I powered through it.