Before the Flood: Destruction, Community, and Survival in the Drowned Towns of the QuabbinIn the tradition of Silent Spring, a modern parable of the American experience and our paradoxical relationship with the natural world. Though it seems a part of the "natural" landscape of New England today, the Swift River Valley reservoir, dam, dike, and nature area was a triumph of civil engineering. It combined forward looking environmental stewardship and social policy, yet the little peopleand the four towns in which they livedgot lost along the