Overview

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. This indelible quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance applies especially well to California, where legend has so thoroughly become fact that it is visible in everyday landscapes. Our foremost historian of the West, Richard White, never content to print the legend, collaborates here with his son, a talented photographer, in excavating the layers of legend built into California's landscapes. Together they expose the bedrock of the past, and the history they uncover is astonishing. Jesse White's evocative photographs illustrate the sites of Richard's historical investigations. A quiet riverside park in the Tulare Lake Basin belies scenes of horror from when settlers in the 1850s transformed native homelands into American property. Near the lake bed stands a small marker commemorating the Mussel Slough massacre, the culmination of a violent struggle over land titles between local farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1870s. Tulare is today a fertile agricultural county, but its population is poor and unhealthy. The California Dream lives elsewhere. The lake itself disappeared when tributary rivers were rerouted to deliver government-subsidized water to big agriculture and cities. But climate change ensures that it will be back--the only question is when.

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9781665119504

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Richard White is the Margaret Byrne Professor Emeritus of American History at Stanford University. He is the author of many acclaimed books in American western and environmental history, including Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Parkman Prize, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Actor Charles Constant's professional storytelling career began at the age of thirteen, when he became an Actors' Equity Association apprentice. After training in Chicago and London, he went on to appear onstage in theaters across the country. Charles was chosen by Mark Cuban to narrate his book How to Win at the Sport of Business, and his work on Into the Crossfire became an Audible Listener Favorite in February 2014. Publishers Weekly says that he provides strong narration and finds his voice to be deep and assertive. Jesse Amble White is a landscape and documentary photographer.

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