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Title: The Great Thirst: Californians and Water-A History, Revised Edition
ISBN: 0520224566
Author:
Norris Hundley Jr.
Publicate Date: 2001-05-07
Publish: 2001-05-07
List Price: $25.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.91
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $17.13
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| Customer Review: |
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1: You will like it if you like romanticized history
The book is well written, but the way the author romanticizes ancient people living in California and demonizes its modern inhabitants puts me off.
I do not mind an author's biases creeping in his writing but then he should be able to carry if off with readers who dont disagree with him. For example, I read Reisner's Cadillac Desert which is a totally biased commentary on California's water and I rarely agreed with his viewpoint, but he puts it in such an interesting manner that it makes good reading nevertheless and I loved that book. The author of this book not only makes preposterous statements (for example, saying that the Indian inhabitants of America lived lives in harmony in nature because they were wiser than us) but makes them without constructing a strong intellectual platform that might engage someone who thinks differently.
Any new information the book provides is lost in the lengthy and tedious literary style that the author adopts. I am a fairly keen reader, and I must say that I dozed off reading this book more often than with others of this genre.
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2: A bit too long, but a nice compliment to Reisner' s book
Reisner's book "Cadillac Desert" is much more readible, but this book is a data dump of the above and more of a primary reference.Recommended if you are a pedant or just like more raw unfiltered data.
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3: The Single Tome on California Water History
The Great Thirst is as long and detailed as the subject matter it tackles, a complete history of Californians and water. The revised edition came out in 2001 and addresses the recent developments in the Bay-Delta program (formally know as CALFED) and important water policy changes at Mono Lake and in the Owens Valley. The book consists of 8 chapters covering the early, pre-European settlement, the role water development played in the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the development of large state and inter-state water projects, the recent changes in water policy brought on largely by shortages, and environment concerns, and the author's summary. To give you a feel for the detailed scope of the work, the author includes over 100 pages of notes to supplement the text, and a bibliography of nearly the same length! I have yet to find anything the matches The Great Thirst in its unbiased depiction of the complex history, water policies, competing interests, and future challenges that have and will come to shape California. The author, an American History professor at UCLA, presents the reader with the single most important fact facing California, "Californian's are currently using more water than well be available on a long-term basis. The deficit is 1.6 million acre-feet annually, which can rise to more than 5.1 million acre-feet during drought years..." The public appetite for new water development has come to a halt given the high cost to state budgets and more importantly the surrounding landscape. But the growth of development and population continues marching on, leaving you to wonder how the final chapter of this important story will be written.
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4: An excellent and underrated treatment of a complex subject
I was pleasantly surprised by the first edition of this book, which was much shorter than the new one. It is broader in range than any other account that I know on this absolutely central issue for California, and its depth doesn't seem to be compromised at all in spite of its comprehensibility. It isn't exactly lively writing, but it's clear nonetheless. I think Hundley's book offers lay readers a fuller picture of why water is so important in California and the west, and how people have tried to manage it, than any other single volume.
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