A01=Norris Hundley
american history
american west
aqueduct
Author_Norris Hundley
boulder canyon project
california
california water
Category=NHK
Category=RNF
central valley project
conservation
drought
ecology
environment
environmentalism
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
farmland
flood
flood control
geographic diversity
geography
gold rush
history
irrigation
los angeles
nature
nonfiction
owens valley
reclamation act
riparian rights
rural
san fernando valley
science
state history
urbanization
water
water allocation
water governance
water policy
water rights
waterscape
waterways
west
Product details
- ISBN 9780520224568
- Weight: 1134g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jul 2001
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The story of 'the great thirst' is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization of farmland and open spaces, persisting despoliation of water supplies, and demands for equity in water allocation for an exploding population. People the world over confront these problems, and Hundley examines them with clarity and eloquence in the unruly laboratory of California. The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then early Spanish and Mexican immigrants contrived to use and share the available water and how American settlers, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, transformed California into the home of the nation's preeminent water seekers.
The desire to use, profit from, manipulate, and control water drives the people and events in this fascinating narrative until, by the end of the twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities has wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived its way to an entirely different statewide waterscape.
Norris Hundley, Jr. is Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Great Thirst, a bestseller in its first edition, was preceded by other books including California: History of a Remarkable State (with John Caughey, 1982).
