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California's Over leads us down an unmarked road to the coast and then deep into the rotten, labyrinthine house where James Farmican, the famous poet, shot himself to death years ago, leaving behind a legacy of adulation and bankruptcy. Now his family is leaving, and the young narrator--who calls himself Baelthon--has been hired to haul the furniture onto the lawn and sort through the attic and basement. But as Baelthon excavates, he also discovers layers of family mystery and comedy and cruelty, all of it piled too deeply for anyone to sort out: the unexplained disappearance of Farmican's ashes, the unfinished novel that may actually be his suicide note, the opera about cannibalism that his son is writing to rescue himself from obscurity, and, finally, the family's migration to the Nevada desert to claim their inheritance. And Baelthon discovers Wendy, Farmican's sixteen-year-old daughter who keeps her checkers pieces taped to the board where she and her father left them before he died. Emerging from her chrysalis of baby fat and self-loathing, Wendy is destined to be both the love of Baelthon's life and the object of his betrayal. Twenty-five years later, from the perspective of mid- and middle-class life, Baelthon recalls the mistaken selves he and the Farmicans once inhabited. What he doesn't expect--or think he deserves--is the redemption and abiding against-all-odds love that await him.
A dramatic environmental saga unfolds in Hart's compelling story of the fight to save Mono Lake, and ancient inland sea in located in the eastern Sierra Yosemite National Park. Hart integrates natural, social, and political history into a story that is a source of hope for anyone concerned about the environment. Complementing Hart's narrative are stunning photos takes by many leading nature photographers, including David Sanger, Galen Rowell, and Betty Randall. 61 illustrations. 31 color plates.
Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Dream Is Over tells the extraordinary story of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, created by visionary University of California President Clark Kerr and his contemporaries. The Master Plan’s equality of opportunity policy brought college within reach of millions of American families for the first time and fashioned the world’s leading system of public research universities. The California idea became the leading model for higher education across the world and has had great influence in the rapid growth of universities in China and East Asia. Yet, remarkably, the political conditions supporting the California idea in California itself have evaporated. Universal access is faltering, public tuition is rising, the great research universities face new challenges, and educational participation in California, once the national leader, lags far behind. Can the social values embodied in Kerr’s vision be renewed?
Those of us who live in California know that it is an amazing place, and one of the reasons our state is so unique is the incredible diversity of life throughout its length and breadth. This atlas shows what the diversity of life in California is and where such resources are located.
This book undertakes a study of the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) and a comparison with the Appalachian region. The eight-county San Joaquin Valley, part of California's Central Valley, is home to 5 of the 10 most agriculturally productive counties in the United States. By a wide range of indicators, the SJV is also one of the most economically depressed regions of the United States. This book analyses the SJV's counties and statistically documents the basis of current socio-economic conditions. The book further explores the extent to which the SJV shares similarities with and differs from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) area and a 68-county Central Appalachian sub-region which contains some of the most economically distressed counties in Appalachia. The book also examines the role of federal expenditures in the cities and counties of the SJV. In addition to examining socio-economic conditions in the SJV, the book provides analysis of water supply and quality issues especially those concerning agriculture, air quality concerns, and rail and shipping issues. It is fully indexed.
"Illuminating." --New York Times WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016 When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. Yet despite decades of headlines warning of mega-droughts, the death of agriculture, and the collapse of cities, the Colorado River basin has thrived in the face of water scarcity. John Fleck shows how western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or U.S. environmentalists and Mexican water managers, actually have a promising record of conservation and cooperation. Rather than perpetuate the myth "Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative--a future where the Colorado continues to flow.
This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for California’s remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem type—its distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of California’s ecological patterns and the history of the state’s various ecosystems, outlining how the challenges of climate change and invasive species and opportunities for regulation and stewardship could potentially affect the state’s ecosystems. The text explicitly incorporates both human impacts and conservation and restoration efforts and shows how ecosystems support human well-being. Edited by two esteemed ecosystem ecologists and with overviews by leading experts on each ecosystem, this definitive work will be indispensable for natural resource management and conservation professionals as well as for undergraduate or graduate students of California’s environment and curious naturalists.
California offers an incredible diversity of world-class landscapes to explore. Within its 163,700 square miles lie the lowest and highest points in the continental United States, the hottest place on earth, and the oldest life on the planet: Bristlecone pines up to 4,600 years old. Whether your camera is a smartphone or the latest DSLR, this book can help you find the most interesting places. Capturing memorable images just got a lot easier! Whether your interest is mountains or seashores, slot canyons or salt flats, waterfalls, rock formations, sand dunes, lighthouses or historic mining camps, the book will direct you to the best landmarks, at the time when the light is best. The author has done the hard work for you, revealing the best photo hot-spots and saving you the frustration of searching for them yourself.