Moondoggle

Franklin Roosevelt and the Fight for Tidal-Electric Power at Passamaquoddy Bay

Mark C. Borton

For 25 years, Franklin Roosevelt tried to build the world’s first tidal-electric power plant—by harnessing the Bay of Fundy’s giant tides. The enormous project would have dammed-up 110 square miles of coastal Maine and Canada. Moondoggle is a dramatic tale about the appeal of tidal power, the difficulties in realizing its potential, and the engineers and three U.S. Presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy) who tried to make clean and renewable tidal power a reality. Now on the 100th anniversary of the “Passamaquoddy Project’s” conception (1920-2020), Moondoggle—the only book on the project—explores what almost was, and what could be.

Down East Books

Pages: 672 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-60893-714-1 • Hardback • April 2023 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-60893-715-8 • eBook • April 2023 • $42.50 • (£33.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, History / United States / State & Local / New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)

Moondoggle

Franklin Roosevelt and the Fight for Tidal-Electric Power at Passamaquoddy Bay

Hardback

eBook

Summary

For 25 years, Franklin Roosevelt tried to build the world’s first tidal-electric power plant—by harnessing the Bay of Fundy’s giant tides. The enormous project would have dammed-up 110 square miles of coastal Maine and Canada. Moondoggle is a dramatic tale about the appeal of tidal power, the difficulties in realizing its potential, and the engineers and three U.S. Presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy) who tried to make clean and renewable tidal power a reality. Now on the 100th anniversary of the “Passamaquoddy Project’s” conception (1920-2020), Moondoggle—the only book on the project—explores what almost was, and what could be.

Details

Down East Books

Pages: 672 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-60893-714-1 • Hardback • April 2023 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-60893-715-8 • eBook • April 2023 • $42.50 • (£33.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, History / United States / State & Local / New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)

Author

Mark C. Borton was the creator, and for 13 years, the publisher of the Embassy Boating Guide series of books covering the east coast of the United States from Maine to Florida. The New York Times said, “Embassy Guide is all that most skippers will want or need to know,” and Sail magazine called it, “The ultimate guide in copious content and style.” The four volumes have gone through a total of 41 printed editions and have sold more than one quarter of a million copies. Borton also created the Maptech Waterproof Chart series, which now includes 92 titles.

Reviews

"Daniel Burnham said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.” The massive New Deal project to harness the world’s highest tides to produce electricity, vividly described by Mark Borton, stirred some men’s blood and others’ ire. The story will delight readers with its mix of history, politics, engineering, and the power of nature." --John A. Riggs, Author of High Tension: FDR’s Battle to Power America

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"Mark Borton's "Moondoogle" delivers a gripping and lavishly detailed account of the wildly ambitious attempt to light houses and power industry by damming the 30-foot tides of Passamaquoddy Bay."
-- Richard Conniff, author of "Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion" (MIT Press)

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“I am clearly hooked already and suffused with [Mark’s] engaging writing style and obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter… I feel [his] mosaic of anecdotes and pieces of information snapping into place… [Mark’s] description of FDR's diagnosis of polio is particularly effective.” – Peter Homans, grandson of the hydroelectric engineer who designed the Quoddy Tidal Power Project.

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“[Mark’s] narrative seizes me...I really am just loving it. It is giving me answers to questions I had that my parents somehow didn’t answer. It’s a painful, disappointing history. Perhaps that’s why. But [Mark] [has] written it wonderfully.”
—Anne Pike Rugh, daughter of Quoddy Tidal Power Project Engineer, Moses Pike.

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