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Western Times And Water Wars
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Book Synopsis Western Times and Water Wars by : John Walton
Download or read book Western Times and Water Wars written by John Walton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993-08-31 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Walton first uses his magnifying glass to capture images of struggle in a California valley during a century and a half of transformation, then inverts it to scrutinize the American state, popular politics, and collective action in general. The maneuver is bold, the outcome stimulating."—Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research "A passionate and first rate historical adventure. The plot is as intricate, fascinating, and full of intrigue and detail as a Dickens or a Tolstoy novel."—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War
Download or read book Water Wars written by John Bulloch and published by Orion. This book was released on 1995 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the most volatile, heavily-armed and strategically-significant regions on earth, the Middle East constantly engages the attention of world powers, whose foreign policies are often driven by a desire for guaranteed access to oil and for overall stability in the area. This book contends, however, that it is conflicts over the control of water, not oil, which are likely to threaten stability.
Book Synopsis Water is for Fighting Over by : John Fleck
Download or read book Water is for Fighting Over written by John Fleck and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2016-09 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Illuminating." --New York Times WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016 When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. Yet despite decades of headlines warning of mega-droughts, the death of agriculture, and the collapse of cities, the Colorado River basin has thrived in the face of water scarcity. John Fleck shows how western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or U.S. environmentalists and Mexican water managers, actually have a promising record of conservation and cooperation. Rather than perpetuate the myth "Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative--a future where the Colorado continues to flow.
Book Synopsis Water and Power by : William L. Kahrl
Download or read book Water and Power written by William L. Kahrl and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1983-11-08 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not the purpose of this work to propose a specific format for the settlement of the city's current difficulties with the valley, to resolve the environmental questions associated with Los Angeles's proposed groundwater pumping program, or to promote any cause associated with the developing situation in the Owens Valley. But by performing the essential historical task of separating what happened from what did not, and by distinguishing in this way the choices which have been made from those which have yet to be decided, it is my hope that this effort will help to establish that common basis for understanding which is essential for the debate over specific issues to proceed most effectively. This book, then, is scarcely the last word on the Owens Valley conflict: the final chapter, after all, has yet to be written. The story that has emerged here is at once very different and more troubling than the conventional treatments of the conflict as a simplistic political morality play. Any attempt to deal with so controversial a subject, however, is almost certain to spark controversy itself. For that reason, with the exception of a small collection of private letters, this work is constructed entirely from the published documents and other materials available to the general public, anchoring the narrative in sources the reader can consult to trace the line of my argument on any point with which he or she may disagree. In addition, the work as a whole has been reviewed for technical accuracy by officials of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, although the department is in no way responsible for the content of this study or the conclusions drawn from it.
Download or read book Cadillac Desert written by Marc Reisner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1993-06-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.
Book Synopsis The Great Lakes Water Wars by : Peter Annin
Download or read book The Great Lakes Water Wars written by Peter Annin and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles. Destined to be the definitive story for the general public as well as policymakers, The Great Lakes Water Wars is a balanced, comprehensive look behind the scenes at the conflicts and compromises that are the past-and future-of this unique resource.
Book Synopsis Water, Peace, and War by : Brahma Chellaney
Download or read book Water, Peace, and War written by Brahma Chellaney and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in an updated edition, this pioneering and authoritative study considers the profound impact of the growing global water crunch on international peace and security as well as possible ways to mitigate the crisis. Although water is essential to sustaining life and livelihoods, geostrategist Brahma Chellaney argues that it remains the world’s most underappreciated and undervalued resource. One sobering fact is that the retail price of bottled water is already higher than the international spot price of crude oil. But unlike oil, water has no substitute, raising the specter of water becoming the next flashpoint for conflict. Water war as a concept may not mesh with the conventional construct of warfare, especially for those who plan with tanks, combat planes, and attack submarines as weapons. Yet armies don’t necessarily have to march to battle to seize or defend water resources. Water wars—in a political, diplomatic, or economic sense—are already being waged between riparian neighbors in many parts of the world, fueling cycles of bitter recrimination, exacerbating water challenges, and fostering mistrust that impedes broader regional cooperation and integration. The danger is that these water wars could escalate to armed conflict or further limit already stretched food and energy production. Writing in a direct, nontechnical, and engaging style, Brahma Chellaney draws on a wide range of research from scientific and policy fields to examine the different global linkages between water and peace. Offering a holistic picture and integrated solutions, his book has become the recognized authority on the most precious natural resource of this century and how we can secure humankind’s water future.
Book Synopsis The West without Water by : B. Lynn Ingram
Download or read book The West without Water written by B. Lynn Ingram and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West without Water documents the tumultuous climate of the American West over twenty millennia, with tales of past droughts and deluges and predictions about the impacts of future climate change on water resources. Looking at the region’s current water crisis from the perspective of its climate history, the authors ask the central question of what is "normal" climate for the West, and whether the relatively benign climate of the past century will continue into the future. The West without Water merges climate and paleoclimate research from a wide variety of sources as it introduces readers to key discoveries in cracking the secrets of the region’s climatic past. It demonstrates that extended droughts and catastrophic floods have plagued the West with regularity over the past two millennia and recounts the most disastrous flood in the history of California and the West, which occurred in 1861–62. The authors show that, while the West may have temporarily buffered itself from such harsh climatic swings by creating artificial environments and human landscapes, our modern civilization may be ill-prepared for the future climate changes that are predicted to beset the region. They warn that it is time to face the realities of the past and prepare for a future in which fresh water may be less reliable.
Book Synopsis The Water Wars by : Cameron Stracher
Download or read book The Water Wars written by Cameron Stracher and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to a future where water is more precious than oil or gold... Hundreds of millions of people have already died, and millions more will soon fall-victims of disease, hunger, and dehydration. It is a time of drought and war. The rivers have dried up, the polar caps have melted, and drinkable water is now in the hands of the powerful few. There are fines for wasting it and prison sentences for exceeding the quotas. But Kai didn't seem to care about any of this. He stood in the open road drinking water from a plastic cup, then spilled the remaining drops into the dirt. He didn't go to school, and he traveled with armed guards. Kai claimed he knew a secret-something the government is keeping from us... And then he was gone. Vanished in the middle of the night. Was he kidnapped? Did he flee? Is he alive or dead? There are no clues, only questions. And no one can guess the lengths to which they will go to keep him silent. We have to find him-and the truth-before it is too late for all of us.
Book Synopsis The War on the West by : Douglas Murray
Download or read book The War on the West written by Douglas Murray and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Instant New York Times Bestseller! China has concentration camps now. Why do Westerners claim our sins are unique? It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia? It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. Dictators who slaughter their own people are happy to jump on the “America is a racist country” bandwagon and mimic the language of antiracism and “pro-justice” movements as PR while making authoritarian conquests. If the West is to survive, it must be defended. The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself.
Download or read book Water Wars written by Diane Raines Ward and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-06-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated with new material Every day, we hear alarming news about droughts, pollution, population growth, and climate change—which threaten to make water, even more than oil, the cause of war within our lifetime. Diane Raines Ward reaches beyond the headlines to illuminate our most vexing problems and tells the stories of those working to solve them: hydrologists, politicians, engineers, and everyday people. Based on ten years of research spanning five continents, Water Wars offers fresh insight into a subject to which our fate is inextricably bound.
Book Synopsis The Battle over Hetch Hetchy by : Robert W. Righter
Download or read book The Battle over Hetch Hetchy written by Robert W. Righter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco desperately needed reliable supplies of water and electricity. Its mayor, James Phelan, pressed for the damming of the Tuolumne River in the newly created Yosemite National Park, setting off a firestorm of protest. For the first time in American history, a significant national opposition arose to defend and preserve nature, led by John Muir and the Sierra Club, who sought to protect what they believed was the right of all Americans to experience natural beauty, particularly the magnificent mountains of the Yosemite region. Yet the defenders of the valley, while opposing the creation of a dam and reservoir, did not intend for it to be maintained as wilderness. Instead they advocated a different kind of development--the building of roads, hotels, and an infrastructure to support recreational tourism. Using articles, pamphlets, and broadsides, they successfully whipped up public opinion against the dam. Letters from individuals began to pour into Congress by the thousands, and major newspapers published editorials condemning the dam. The fight went to the floor of Congress, where politicians debated the value of scenery and the costs of western development. Ultimately, passage of the passage of the Raker Act in 1913 by Congress granted San Francisco the right to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A decade later the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the second largest civil engineering project of its day after the Panama Canal, was completed. Yet conflict continued over the ownership of the watershed and the profits derived from hydroelectrocity. To this day the reservoir provides San Francisco with a pure and reliable source of drinking water and an important source of power. Although the Sierra Club lost this battle, the controversy stirred the public into action on behalf of national parks. Future debates over dams and restoration clearly demonstrated the burgeoning strength of grassroots environmentalism. In a narrative peopled by politicians and business leaders, engineers and laborers, preservationists and ordinary citizens, Robert W. Righter tells the epic story of the first major environmental battle of the twentieth century, which reverberates to this day.
Download or read book Trade Is War written by Yash Tandon and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This impressive study focuses on Africa, which has suffered hideous crimes. Yash Tandon’s case is a powerful one, and can be extended: The global class war that is institutionalized in the misnamed 'free trade agreements' is also a war against the traditional victims of class war at home. The resistance, in Africa and elsewhere, which Tandon describes here, is a source of hope for the future." —Noam Chomsky "A necessary and timely contribution which goes to the roots of the deep crises we face as humanity." —Vandana Shiva "... understand that 'trade is war' as Yash Tandon beautifully explains in this important book." —Samir Amin Globalization has reduced many aspects of modern life to little more than commodities controlled by multinational corporations. Everything, from land and water to health and human rights, is today intimately linked to the issue of free trade. Conventional wisdom presents this development as benign, the sole path to progress. Yash Tandon, drawing on decades of on-the-ground experience as a high level negotiator in bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), here challenges this prevailing orthodoxy. He insists that, for the vast majority of people, and especially those in the poorer regions of the world, free trade not only hinders development – it visits relentless waves of violence and impoverishment on their lives. Trade Is War shows how the WTO and the Economic Partnership Agreements like the EU-Africa EPA and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are camouflaged in a rhetoric that hides their primary function as the servants of global business. Their actions are inflaming a crisis that extends beyond the realm of the economic, creating hot wars for markets and resources, fought between proxies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and now even in Europe. In these pages Tandon suggests an alternative vision to this devastation, one based on self-sustaining, non-violent communities engaging in trade based on the real value of goods and services and the introduction of alternative currencies.
Download or read book Storied Land written by John Walton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John Walton never writes predictable books, and Monterey, California, is not a predictable place; the pairing is perfect. Although rooted in Monterey, this book explores how people in general construct historical narratives. Storied Land is as thought-provoking a discussion of public history and what it means to tell stories about the past as anything that I have read."—Richard White, author of Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories "With deep research, shrewd analysis, and vivid writing, John Walton reveals how we live in a web of competing stories that connect future and present to a contested past. In recovering the particular riches of Monterey's literally storied past, Walton finds universal experiences of labor, resistance, loss, and silencing. His own masterful storytelling lets us develop a fuller, more humane tie to the people of our past."—Alan Taylor, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic "In the borderlands between archived event and public memory, John Walton has found a pathway to understanding the process whereby a community remembers, forgets, denies, affirms, or otherwise structures or re-structures its understanding of itself. Excavating a region and a city important to Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and American California, A Storied Land makes a welcomed contribution to California studies and the larger history and sociology of place."—Kevin Starr, author of Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era "Once again, John Walton has turned the facts about California into a compelling narrative and a profound meditation on the nature of history and collective memory."—Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds
Book Synopsis Rivers of Empire by : Donald Worster
Download or read book Rivers of Empire written by Donald Worster and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality.
Download or read book The Dreamt Land written by Mark Arax and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil—the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers—the nut king, grape king and citrus queen—tell their story here for the first time. Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.
Book Synopsis The Earth Is Weeping by : Peter Cozzens
Download or read book The Earth Is Weeping written by Peter Cozzens and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this “sweeping work of narrative history” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost. After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led. The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.
