Bibliography of TVA History

Want to dig more deeply into the rich and fascinating history of the Tennessee Valley Authority?

Callahan, North. TVA: Bridge over Troubled Waters. A.S. Barnes and Co., 1980.

Clapp, Gordon R. The TVA: An Approach to the Development of a Region. Russell and Russell, 1971.

Creese, Walter. TVA’s Public Planning. University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

Culvahouse, Tim et al. The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. 

Daws, Laura Beth and Susan L. Brinson. The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama. University of Alabama Press, 2019.

Droze, William Henry. High Dams and Slack Waters: TVA Rebuilds a River. Louisiana State University Press, 1965

Ezzell, Patricia Bernard. TVA Photography: Thirty Years of Life in the Tennessee Valley. University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

Ezzell, Patricia Bernard. TVA Photography, 1963-2008: Challenges and Changes in the Tennessee Valley, University Press of Mississippi, 2008.

Grant, Nancy L. TVA and Black Americans: Planning for the Status Quo. Temple University Press, 1990.

Hargrove, Edwin C. and Paul K. Conkin, ed. TVA: Fifty Years of Grass Roots Bureaucracy. University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Hargrove, Edwin C. Prisoners of Myth: The Leadership of TVA, 1933-1990. Princeton University Press, 1994.

Hubbard, Preston J. Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920-1932. Vanderbilt University Press, 1961.

Kyle, John H. The Building of TVA: An Illustrated History. Louisiana State University Press, 1958.

Lilienthal, David E. TVA: Democracy on the March. Revised edition. Greenwood Press, 1977.

__________. The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Volume 1: The TVA Years. Harper and Row, 1964.

Martin, Roscoe C., ed. TVA, The First Twenty Years: A Staff Report. University of Alabama Press, 1956.

McCraw, Thomas K. TVA and the Power Fight, 1933-1939. Lippincott, 1971.

McDonald, Michael J. and John Muldowny. TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area. University of Tennessee Press, 1982.

Moore, John R., ed. The Economic Impact of TVA. University of Tennessee Press, 1967.

Morgan, Arthur E. The Making of the TVA. Prometheus Books, 1974.

Neuse, Steven M. David E. Lilienthal: The Journey of an American Liberal. University of Tennessee Press, 1996.

Owen, Marguerite. The Tennessee Valley Authority. Praeger Publishers, 1973.

Pritchard, Erin E. and Todd M. Ahlman, ed. TVA Archaeology: 75 Years of Prehistoric Site Research. University of Tennessee Press, 2009.

Rechichar, Stephen J. and Michael R. Fitzgerald. The Consequences of Administrative Decision: TVA’s Economic Development Mission and Intergovernmental Regulation. University of Tennessee Press, 1983. 

Sachs, Avigail. The Garden in the Machine: Planning and Democracy in the Tennessee Valley Authority. University of Virginia Press, 2023.

Talbert, Roy. FDR’s Utopian: Arthur Morgan of the TVA. University Press of Mississippi, 1987.

Tennessee Valley Authority Act, 16 USC Section 831, 831c, 831d-831h-l, 831I-831ed.

Wheeler, William Bruce and Michael J. McDonald. TVA and the Tellico Dam, 1936-1979: A Bureaucratic Crisis in Post-Industrial America. University of Tennessee Press, 1986. 

Walker, Melissa. All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919–1941. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.