A01=Aaron Gilbreath
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Agriculture
American Frontier
American History
American West
Author_Aaron Gilbreath
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Backpacking
Bakersfield
Boat Trip
Boating
California
california history
california roadtrip
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=NHK
Category=WN
Category=WQH
central Californian Valley
COP=United States
Cultural experiences
Dam
Dams
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Drought
ecotourism
Environment
Environmental Studies
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eq_history
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Essays
Federal Census Bureau
Flood Control
Frank Latta
Golden State
Language_English
Levees
Native American Displacement
native american history
Natural World
Nature
PA=Available
Pacific Coast Range
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
River
Rural Land
San Francisco
San Francisco Bay
San Joaquin Valley
Sierra Nevada
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Water Use
Western History
Wild Lands
Wilderness
Product details
- ISBN 9781496218636
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2020
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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2022 Oregon Book Award Finalist
A vivid journey through California’s vast rural interior, The Heart of California weaves the story of historian Frank Latta’s forgotten 1938 boat trip from Bakersfield to San Francisco with Aaron Gilbreath’s trip retracing Latta’s route by car during the 2014 drought. Latta embarked on his journey to publicize the need for dams and levees to improve flood control. Gilbreath made his own trip to profile Latta and the productive agricultural world that damming has created in the San Joaquin Valley, to describe the region’s nearly lost indigenous culture and ecosystems, and to bring this complex yet largely ignored landscape to life.
The Valley is home to some of California’s fastest growing cities and, by some estimates, produces 25 percent of America’s food. The Valley feeds too many people, and is too unique, to be ignored. To understand California, you have to understand the Valley. Mixing travel writing, historical recreations, western history, natural history, and first-person reportage, The Heart of California is a road-trip narrative about this fascinating region and its most important early documentarian.
A vivid journey through California’s vast rural interior, The Heart of California weaves the story of historian Frank Latta’s forgotten 1938 boat trip from Bakersfield to San Francisco with Aaron Gilbreath’s trip retracing Latta’s route by car during the 2014 drought. Latta embarked on his journey to publicize the need for dams and levees to improve flood control. Gilbreath made his own trip to profile Latta and the productive agricultural world that damming has created in the San Joaquin Valley, to describe the region’s nearly lost indigenous culture and ecosystems, and to bring this complex yet largely ignored landscape to life.
The Valley is home to some of California’s fastest growing cities and, by some estimates, produces 25 percent of America’s food. The Valley feeds too many people, and is too unique, to be ignored. To understand California, you have to understand the Valley. Mixing travel writing, historical recreations, western history, natural history, and first-person reportage, The Heart of California is a road-trip narrative about this fascinating region and its most important early documentarian.
Aaron Gilbreath is an essayist, a journalist, and previously a contributing editor at Longreads. He has written essays and articles for Harper’s, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and the Dublin Review and his work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. Gilbreath is the author of two essay collections, Everything We Don’t Know: Essays and This Is: Essays on Jazz.
