Founded as a port at the confluence of two great rivers, Kansas
City has the waters of the Missouri running through its
bloodstream-threading expressways, delivering drinking water,
carrying traffic and sewage, and emerging most visibly in the
city's celebrated fountains. Despite, or perhaps because of, the
river's ubiquity, the complex and critical nature of its presence
can be hard to understand, which is precisely why Amahia Mallea's
enlightening book is so essential. Moving from the city's center to
the outer limits of the metropolitan area, A River in the City of
Fountains offers a clear view of the reach and intricacies of the
Missouri River's connection to life in Kansas City. The history of
this connection is one of science and industry working, sometimes
at cross-purposes, to bend the river to the needs of commerce and
public health. It is a story populated with heroes and villains,
visionaries and robber barons, scientists and civil engineers,
politicians and activists-all with schemes and plans and
far-reaching ideas about what, and whose, demands the power of the
Missouri should serve. And so, inevitably, it is a story of
disparities: a story of, from one flood to the next, the haves
staking out higher ground, leaving the have-nots to the perils of
low-lying land. But what the book also shows us is a slow awakening
to the ways in which all those vying for the river's favor are
inextricably connected by its course; here we see, finally, a
growing awareness of the river's essential role in the health and
welfare of the whole urban environment. In the end, all citizens of
Kansas City are both upstream and downstream; all are equally
dependent on the health of the river. What this book helps us see
is, at last, as much the city in the river as the river in the
city.
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