The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire [Hardcover]

Mark Arax (Author), Rick Wartzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

A rich, colorful history of California centering on the untold story of America 's biggest farmer, J. G. Boswell, who controls more than $1 billion worth of water rights and real estate in the heart of the state. J. G. Boswell is the biggest farmer in America. Over the past fifty years he has built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields. " Now eighty years old, with an almost pathological bent toward privacy, Boswell has spent the past few years confiding one of the great stories of the American West to Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s,drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell 's agricultural operation -from lab to field to gin - is unrivaled anywhere. Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

This meticulous narrative of the rise of the cotton magnate James G. Boswell begins in the nineteen-twenties, when his family was driven from Georgia by boll-weevil infestations and brought its plantation ways to California's San Joaquin Valley. Not to be defeated by nature again, the Boswells leveed and dammed Tulare Lake, the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, to the point of extinction. In its six-hundred-square-mile basin they grew cotton, while in Los Angeles office towers they built one of the country's largest agricultural operations, swallowing small farms and multimillion-dollar subsidies with equal vigor. Arax and Wartzman strive for evenhandedness but acknowledge the costs of Big Ag—such as evaporation ponds with selenium levels so high that ducks are born with corkscrewed beaks and no eyes, and the recurrent "hundred-year floods," stubborn attempts by the old lake to reassert itself.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

You may never have heard of him, but J. G. Boswell controls the biggest farming empire in America. In the early part of the twentieth century, his family moved from Georgia to California, where they drained one of the country's biggest lakes, Tulare Lake, and planted cotton. Soon their cotton empire became the richest and most technologically sophisticated on the planet. This book is many stories, all rolled into one epic. It's the story of the Boswells from the 1800s to the present day; of cotton farming in America; of California itself; and of the evolution of race relations as the country dragged itself out of the era of slavery and, not at all smoothly, into the modern era. Written in a lively style that matches the bigger-than-life qualities of its subject, the book is far more exciting than you might think the story of a cotton farmer would be. With proper marketing, it could smash through genre barriers and become the Seabiscuit of agricultural biography! David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1 edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586480286
• ISBN-13: 978-1586480288
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > History

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A grand sweeping book., October 21, 2003

By 

Ali John Comegys (Fresno, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (Hardcover)

I couldn't put this book down! Arax did it again. This is a grand sweeping history of the J G Boswell Company and the Tulare Lake bottom they farm. A few times the book described events and people I personally knew and they got it exactly right. This is a good balanced history and a story that really needed telling. For most people the San Joaquin Valley is almost a complete blank, for many who live here it is precisely where the plantation meets the rancho. Reading this epic book about JG Boswell will go a long way towards explaining why and whatever happened to the biggest lake west of the Mississippi.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LARGEST LAKE IN THE US DRAINED FOR AGRICULTURE, January 23, 2004

By 

Chris Brewer (Exeter, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (Hardcover)

Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman have compiled and written a wonderfully comprehensive book on the struggle between man and nature as well as on man and the political machine. The story of J.G. Boswell and the taking of Tulare Lake is nothing short of an incredible tale of how a family of humble beginnings could become the largest farming operation in the United States. Arax and Wartzman are to be congratulated for their survival through years of research and writing of a book that will remain a classic of California history for years to come. Seen by many who are connected with the Boswell empire as a threat, the book lays out the details of how the company systematically gained thousands of acre feet of water rights in a drought-threatened San Joaquin Valley. It is a well rounded book telling a fantastic true story. The Boswell company should be proud of their success as should Mark and Rick in theirs. Booksellers in the San Joaquin Valley can't keep it in stock and have sold thousands of copies to local residents. It is a story that people want to know about.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous historical, political, and social epic, November 8, 2004

By 

Brent Edwards (Martinez, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (Hardcover)

The book centers around three generations of Boswells as they migrated from Green County Georgia to Kings County California and became the largest producers of cotton in the world, without becoming a household name.

The book also tells of the natural, social, and political histories of the San Joaquin Valley from the days of indigenous peoples and the first Spanish invaders to the present day.

The epic is a fascinating study of twentieth century American history, society, economics, business, finance, management, politics, public policy, labor relations, mechanization, technology, modernization, and nature.

The more personal stories of family, romance, crime, and punishment read more like a good novel.

Some have found the authors liberally biased, but as a conservative, I found the authors well balanced in their presentations of all sides of the stories.

As others have said, the scope is huge and the research extensive. As someone who was born and raised in Kings County California, I found this heretofor unknown local history to be quite fascinating. Nevertheless, I believe this book will have broad appeal to many readers.