The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Centennial Books) [Hardcover]

Norris Hundley Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Series: Centennial Books | Publication Date: June 10, 1992

California is obsessed with water. The need for it - to use and profit from it, to control and manipulate it - has shaped Californian history to a remarkable extent. Not surprisingly, the story of Californians and water is filled with intrigue and plot twists. The author tells that story from before the arrival of Europeans to the drought that ushered in the 1990s. He describes the waterscape in its natural state: a scene of incredibly varied terrain and watercourse and wildly fluctuating rainfall. The aboriginal Californians did little to alter this natural state. Aside from limited diversions of streams for irrigation or fish harvesting, they simply took what water they needed from places they found it. Early Spanish and Mexican immigrants, although they exploited water supplies on a large scale for the settlements, considered water primarily a community resource, not to be monopolized by anyone. It was the Americans, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, who transformed California into a collection of the nation's pre-eminent water seekers. By the later 20th century, a large, colourful cast of characters and communities had wheeled and dealed, built, diverted and conived its way to an entirely different California waterscape. The author demolishes the image of monolithic "water empire" managed by a homogeneous elite. There were always competing individuals and interests in every question of water use, and the mammoth projects - dams, aquaducts and irrigation districts - all came about through uneasy, constantly shifting political alliances. The story is still being written and it revolves, as it always has, around the consequences of human values for the waterscape.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The Great Thirst is a fascinating history of the development of California's water resources. Early immigrants, miners, farmers, environmentalists, private industry, and public agencies pursued their own agendas for access to water and were in turn affected by the "urban imperialism" of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which appropriated water with little regard for the needs of other communities. The diversion of rivers; the building of reservoirs, dams, aqueducts and canals; and the establishment of irrigation districts and other water projects had their supporters and detractors both within and outside the state. Hundley describes the battles, the inequities, and the solutions in California's water wars. He illustrates the complexities of human behavior when interests of population, agriculture, and industry compete for access to a vital resource. Read The Great Thirst and John Walton's Western Times and Water Wars ( LJ 1/92) for an understanding of how water interests shaped California's social and political character. For academic and larger public libraries.
-Irwin Weintraub, Rutgers Univ. Libs., Piscataway, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

[A] comprehensive account of California water from the Edenic dreamtime of the aboriginal population to the Great Drought of the early 1980s. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Product Details

• Hardcover: 551 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (June 10, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520077865
• ISBN-13: 978-0520077867
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,330,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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