Includes bibliographical references (p. 252-283) and index.

Water law, water politics, and especially water shenanigans are at the center of this book about New Mexico and Texas dividing the Pecos River. On one level the story is about a twenty-year court case, Texas v. New Mexico, a monstrous law suit between two states sharing a common water source, a state boundary, and a long history of mutual enmity. On another level, this story is as big and far-reaching as the high plains drained by the Pecos: it is part memoir, part biography, and part environmental history, part the history of hydrology, and part a contribution to the annals of litigation in the great tradition of Anthony Lewis and Jonathan Harr.