About this item
From roots to canopy, a lush, verdant history of the making of California. California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit.
About the Author
I'm a part-time photographer, amateur accordionist, and professional historian. Because my work combines environmental and humanistic approaches, I like to call myself a "geohumanist." My books have won nine awards, including the Francis Parkman Prize for best-written non-fiction book on an American theme, a literary award that honors the "union of the historian and the artist." My next book will be "The Latest Oldest Tree: Life Beyond the World of Now" (under contract with Basic Books) . I have long-term plans for three more: "The Aerial View" (on surveilling the planet from above) ; "Four Corners" (a thousand-year narrative of the American Southwest) ; and "The Everlasting Stone Age" (a cultural history of common earth materials) . In 2014 I won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute. To learn more, visit jaredfarmer.net
