In 1976, the Teton Dam collapsed, unleashing a wall of water that ravaged eastern Idaho and shattered the publics trust in American infrastructure. Engineers, historians, and survivors have asked the same question: Why did it fail? For decades, the disaster has been reduced to a cautionary tale, a grim case study, a footnote in engineering textbooks. But what if the real story is more complicated than we have ever been told?

Failure and Fortitude is a meticulously researched, vividly written account of the Teton Dams rise and ruin. It reconstructs the hours that changed everything and the decisions behind the failure. Failure and Fortitude also recounts the remarkable story of the communities who refused to be defined by devastation — neighbors who dug each other out, rebuilt from mud and memory, and proved that resilience can be as powerful as any flood.

This is not just a story of seepage and soil mechanics, but of faith and ambition, bureaucracy and blind spots, and the razor-thin line between confidence and catastrophe.