The Babu can see this popping up on some future Comp Lit paper: "Compare and contrast Arundhati Roy and Peter Hessler on Big Dams." But seriously...he found Hessler's 'Underwater', on the Three Gorges project just as eloquent and persuasive as Roy's The Greater Common Good: "In the future, when people look back at China’s transition period, one of the lasting monuments may well be an enormous expanse of dead water in central China." The New Yorker also carried a Q&A.