Arax’s critical but compassionate exploration of this mesmerizing landscape and its reason-defying shapeshifting is both alarming and magnificent. He leveled its hog wallows, denuded its salt brush and killed the last of its mustang, antelope, and tule elk.” Today the region, where water-hungry almond trees occupy an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island, is in a long-term spiral of desertification while Big Ag drills ever deeper to irrigate and expand orchards and vineyards. This title has: Educational value Too much sex Helpful MixL Adult Augage 18+ Kids will be bored. “The farmer corralled the snowmelt and erased the valley, its desert and marsh. It's a great read, a page turner, Story at its best and a beautiful but harrowing (again, strict realism) look into the soul of China.
Driving in the Central Valley outside Fresno, Mark Arax, a journalist from a family of farmers, traces byzantine irrigation lines and describes what he calls “one of the most dramatic alterations of the earth’s surface in human history.” “Every river busting out of the Sierra was bent sideways, if not backward, by a bulwark of ditches, levees, canals and dams,” he writes. But it is crops, not gold, that have made dreams come true, and men moved heaven and earth-and water-to achieve those dreams. "Ever since the Gold Rush of 1849, California has been the place where Americans go to seek their fortunes.
From the WSJ's "Five Best" weekly book column, 5/6/23:
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