Author and Journalist Mark Arax Launches his lastest Book, the Dreamt Land– Chasing Water and Dust across California
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Date & Time
Tue, Jul 30 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
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3321 State Street Santa Barbara, CA 93105
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Chaucer's Books
THE DREAMT LAND– Chasing Water and Dust Across California
MARK ARAX
Tuesday, July 30th at 7pm
Chaucer’s is deeply honored to host journalist, biographer and memoirist, Mark Arax, as he offers a sweeping, engrossing history of his native California focused on the state’s use, overuse, and shocking mismanagement of water. His newest book is entitled The Dreamt Land– Chasing Water and Dust across California.
“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.
Having lived in the Central Valley for most of his life, Arax knows the people and their problems, and he’s spent decades writing about them for The Los Angeles Times and other publications. And as the son and grandson of local farmers (his grandfather Aram grew raisins near Fresno after emigrating from Armenia in 1920), he seems to have a fundamental sympathy for those who till the soil. Maybe that’s why he saves his harshest scorn for the titans of Big Agriculture who, without ever getting their own hands dirty, try to monopolize California’s water, maximizing their own yields while robbing from their less powerful neighbors. As Arax makes plain in this important book, it’s been the same story in California for almost two centuries now: When it comes to water, “the resource is finite. The greed isn’t.”
“A mesmerizing new book that examines the nation’s most populous state through the prism of its most valuable resource: water. Call author Mark Arax, an award-winning journalist, historian and native son of the Central Valley, a Steinbeck for the 21st century.”
—Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone
“A stunning history of power, arrogance, and greed.” Kirkus Reviews– starred ***