Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the American West by Robert Gottlieb and Peter Booth Wiley is a clunker. I borrowed the book two months ago from my father-in-law, who warned me it wasn’t perfect. It was worse than that limited recommendation. The idea of looking at Western history through the politics of water is solid. The six cities — San Francisco, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles — certainly should make for an interesting history, especially focused on the 20th century. Oh well. Read Cadillac Desert instead. Less urban history, but the kind of synthesis you can only hope to come across a few times a decade. I only finished Empires in the Sun because we returned to Phoenix, so it was my chance to return the book, and I hate leaving a book unfinished, even if it’s not necessarily worth the time.