Origins of the TVA

Preston J. Hubbard was a native of Winfield, Alabama, received his Ph.D. degree from Vanderbilt University, and served on the faculty of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, from 1955 to 1988. J. Leonard Bates was Professor of History at the University of Illinois - Champaign and the author of The Origins of Teapot Dome.

Peculiarly a feature of the 1920s, the Muscle Shoals controversy neatly spans the time between World War I and the New Deal. [What was] a wartime nitrate facility underwent a tortured evolution, through several stages of development, to become the Tennessee Valley Authority.... Professor Hubbard pursues the fantastic controversy, step by detailed step, in this solid book. He tells the story quietly and with admirable detachment, [although] a story involving Henry Ford, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, George Norris, and Gifford Pinchot could not make solemn history. - Mississippi Valley Historical Review