The Dreamt Land

April 1, 2019
Journalist, biographer, and memoirist Arax (West of the West, 2009, etc.) offers a sweeping, engrossing history of his native California focused on the state's use, overuse, and shocking mismanagement of water. "Our water wars," writes the author, "began 150 years ago, at least. What's changed is our old nemesis drought has been joined by the new nemesis of climate change--and thirty million more people." Traveling "from one end of California to the other, from drought to flood to wildfire to mudslide," he chronicles in absorbing detail the transformation of the state's Central Valley from modest seasonal farms to huge agribusinesses exporting pistachios, almonds, mandarins, and pomegranates. His story begins in 1769, when Father Junípero Serra, reporting to the Spanish king, combined religious fervor with sophisticated agriculture, building dams and wells and diverting streams to grow wheat, apples, citrus fruits, dates, olives, and grapes. Yet while the land yielded a bounty, the Native American laborers and converts fell victim to European diseases. "In the matter of a single decade," Arax reports, "tens of thousands of natives from San Francisco to Santa Barbara died from foreign germs." After the demise of the Spanish missions, Mexico stepped in with "the first great California land grab," doling out thousands of acres to gentry. That land grab was hardly the last: The author offers sharply etched portraits of some of the most imperious landowners, including Johann August Sutter, who in the 1850s became the state's "biggest farmer, storekeeper, innkeeper, distiller, miller, tanner, manufacturer, enslaver and liberator"; "cattle king" Henry Miller, who from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s controlled more than 10 million acres, including a few rivers; and Stewart Resnick, the wealthiest farmer in America, perpetrator of clandestine deals and secret pipelines. Drawing on historical sources and nearly 300 interviews, Arax reveals the consequences to land and wildlife of generations of landowners who have defiantly dug, dammed, and diverted California's waters. A stunning history of power, arrogance, and greed.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 13, 2019
Journalist Arax (The King of California) goes both deep and wide in this massive exploration of the relationships between California’s natural patterns of drought and flood, its elaborate and aging water distribution systems, and those who work in its agriculture industry, from migrant laborers to billionaires. Though the stories Arax tells are generally of conflict—between farmers and conservationists, urban and rural dwellers, and family farms and agribusiness—he brings an understanding eye to most perspectives. He even gives a voice to one of his most antithetical subjects, Stewart Resnick, a domineering fruit and nut grower and America’s richest farmer, while also disclosing his discovery of Resnick’s “private, off-the books pipeline” diverting much-needed water from “unsuspecting farmers” into his own orchards. The lion’s share of Arax’s sympathy goes to the people he sees as most deeply invested in the land, especially the small farmers whom he interviews while walking fields of candy grapes, citrus, and raisins, and who remind him of his own family, an Armenian-American farming clan in Fresno. Arax brings a reporter’s precision of language, a researcher’s depth of perception, and a born storyteller’s voice to this empathetic but unsentimental look at the history, present, and uncertain future of a once-arid region restructured into one of the country’s most productive.

Starred review from June 1, 2019

Water and dust, city and farmland, drilling and drought and flood. California's relationship to water is defined by such contradictions and complexities, as evidenced by this brilliant work from Arax (The King of California). Beginning with Arax's own family roots in the rich soil of the Central Valley, the book takes readers on a grandiose and troubling journey through the long history of growth, farming, politics, and capitalism that has imperiled the state's natural water supply, and threatens to devastate the land on which so many lives depend. The resulting tale is noticeably dense at times, but Arax's combination of research with memoir gives it the necessary lift and motion to make it compelling, brutal, and consistently hard to put down. "We have run out of tricks, or at least the easy ones," writes Arax at one point of the problem. It is a painful honesty for us to confront, which makes the issue all the more important for readers everywhere to consider. VERDICT A stunning and uncompromising look at California's man-made water crisis in the context of its complex history of agricultural growth. Highly recommended for those interested in environmental issues and journalistic nonfiction.--Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019
Award-winning Los Angeles Times journalist Arax has written expansively and passionately about his home state, penning articles about life and death in California prisons and coauthoring with Rick Wartzman The King of California (2005) on the J. G. Boswell empire, which owns the world's largest farm in the Central Valley. His latest work explores the enigma of cyclical droughts and floods in the Golden State and the endless struggle farmers face in securing enough water to nourish their crops. For his research, Arax crisscrossed the state, interviewing workers and landowners alike, and navigating the dizzying array of water regulations and sources of moisture, from snowmelt to ever-deeper wells. Arax's narrative flows best when describing colorful figures like Charles the Rainmaker Hatfield who inexplicably but reliably ended nineteenth-century droughts and Hatfield's contemporary, cattle baron Henry Miller, who introduced modern supersize agribusinesses. Arax's highly readable guide to understanding an essential slice of California history also tracks the sometimes-precarious fate of the fruits and vegetables that feed our nation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 1, 2019
Journalist, biographer, and memoirist Arax (West of the West, 2009, etc.) offers a sweeping, engrossing history of his native California focused on the state's use, overuse, and shocking mismanagement of water. "Our water wars," writes the author, "began 150 years ago, at least. What's changed is our old nemesis drought has been joined by the new nemesis of climate change--and thirty million more people." Traveling "from one end of California to the other, from drought to flood to wildfire to mudslide," he chronicles in absorbing detail the transformation of the state's Central Valley from modest seasonal farms to huge agribusinesses exporting pistachios, almonds, mandarins, and pomegranates. His story begins in 1769, when Father Jun�pero Serra, reporting to the Spanish king, combined religious fervor with sophisticated agriculture, building dams and wells and diverting streams to grow wheat, apples, citrus fruits, dates, olives, and grapes. Yet while the land yielded a bounty, the Native American laborers and converts fell victim to European diseases. "In the matter of a single decade," Arax reports, "tens of thousands of natives from San Francisco to Santa Barbara died from foreign germs." After the demise of the Spanish missions, Mexico stepped in with "the first great California land grab," doling out thousands of acres to gentry. That land grab was hardly the last: The author offers sharply etched portraits of some of the most imperious landowners, including Johann August Sutter, who in the 1850s became the state's "biggest farmer, storekeeper, innkeeper, distiller, miller, tanner, manufacturer, enslaver and liberator"; "cattle king" Henry Miller, who from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s controlled more than 10 million acres, including a few rivers; and Stewart Resnick, the wealthiest farmer in America, perpetrator of clandestine deals and secret pipelines. Drawing on historical sources and nearly 300 interviews, Arax reveals the consequences to land and wildlife of generations of landowners who have defiantly dug, dammed, and diverted California's waters. A stunning history of power, arrogance, and greed.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.