I usually enjoy books written by Jerry Borrowman, they are usually historical fiction. I love that he writes about things that have happened and that he puts likable characters into situations that we've all heard of! I'd never really thought much about the construction of Hoover Dam, I've only even been to Nevada a couple of times and haven't even seen it, but looking at the historical photos included in this book, I'm amazed that they were able to build this dam in the 1930's. Now it would be a lot simpler, just because of the tools that we have now that they didn't have then. This book has a lot of characters. There's David and Pete Conway, David is one of the engineers and he's in charge of making sure that there's good air for the men in the tunnels they are digging to channel the Colorado River away from it's banks so that they can have a dry area to make the dam. Pete is a foreman in charge of the men who are going to go down the sides of the canyon to make them smooth so that the concrete can stick to them. There's Tony and his friend Nick, Italians who want to work on the dam, even though it's the depression and most people are rude to them because they're Italian. It doesn't matter that they're American citizens - this is during the Depression and people are mad because they are taking the place of American born workers. I've never really thought of Italians as foreigners, so to me this was a bit foreign! There are multiple little stories going on the side of this one, but I like that it wasn't confusing and even though they talk about technicalities, it didn't go over my head, this was a great book, well worth reading!