All those flooded valleys with their towns and farms were dislocating for people and quite sad even if some argue it was necessary.
I might mention also that Robert Penn Warren wrote a book with this as the setting (Flood: A Romance of Our Time) I haven't read it yet but it looks very interesting. The flooding of an Alabama valley also features prominently in O Brother Where Art Thou.
Here's an interesting thing I saw on C-SPAN last month:
a documentary called "Valley of the Tennessee" from 1944. The US Office of War Information sponsored this and showed it to the people in the places the Allies liberated from the Nazis, the implication I suppose being "Here's what we've done for Americans, we will do great things for you too." Seems to do a good job explaining some of the goals and ideas behind the TVA and its methods, even while portraying its beneficiaries as largely half-wit backwards yokels resistant to change but slowly recognizing the superiority of the new.
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