The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax

The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax

A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil--the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought

Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.

The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the Golden State myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.

Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

Mark Arax is a bestselling author and journalist whose literary nonfiction works about California and the West have won numerous accolades. His writing has featured in the New York Times and the California Sunday Magazine, and he was a previous staffer at the Los Angeles Times. His books include The Dreamt Land, In My Father's Name, West of the West, and The King of California, which earned the California Book Award, the William Saroyan Prize from Stanford University, and was chosen a top book of 2004 by the Los Angeles Times.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781101910191
ISBN 10	1101910194
Title	The Dreamt Land
Author	Mark Arax
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2020-04-07
Number of pages	576
Prizes	Short-listed for Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2019
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.