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bookslikegranola's review against another edition
2.75
A sprawling book that was interesting, but ultimately didn’t seem to know which story it wanted to tell.
The Dreamt Land explores California’s history of water usage and agriculture, using historical accounts, modern reporting, and the author’s own lived experience. It movingly conveys the degree of damage and urgency of the current situation. However, it almost felt like four books in one: either a history of California, an environmental survey, tales of farm workers and the author’s own memoir, and reporting on the powerful and eccentric owners of Big Ag. Each of these individually would have been interesting, but the book constantly jumps jarringly between them in a way that made me loose the plot and ultimately get pretty bored. I do think this was not well suited to audiobook format, as my disjointed listening probably made it more confusing.
Recommended if you want a really thorough look at the history of water usage and agriculture in California, but having some prior context might help.
rosehs's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely one of the best books I've ever read. California history and culture lovers will cherish this, as will those interested in public policy, agriculture, water policy, and politics. I'm currently reading for the second time and finding new treasures. The Audible version - narrated by the author - is stellar. Love love love.
emilywherever's review against another edition
4.0
This book took me four days shy of a full year to read. It is dense (although engagingly written) and extremely depressing. It also felt extremely necessary. Most of the book is a fairly straightforward account of the history of water in our state (which, since the moment Europeans set foot on the land, has been a criminal history). But at the end, Arax gets philosophical. While he absolutely nails the nuance and contradictions of our water crisis that so often get oversimplified (simply running the farmers out of town just means that more suburban sprawl will be built and groundwater pumping will continue; simply getting rid of the Delta pumps won't solve the problem of invasive species and habitat destruction), I don't understand his vilification of environmentalists in the last few chapters. Arax is clearly an environmentalist, even if he doesn't want to admit it. Yet at the end, he seemingly puts more blame on them, for flattening out a complicated situation, than on the farmers or the politicians or the developers. Really, I think that Arax, like the Delta farmer he interviews in the last chapter, can't quite manage to identify capitalism as one of the culprits in the ransacking of our state. But if water can be profited from (even indirectly), California will lose. Anyway, I'm only focusing on this because this all came up in the final chapter, which I just read, as opposed to much of the rest of the book, which I read nearly a year ago. Regardless of a few small quibbles, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a water-user in California.
erynecki's review against another edition
5.0
I’m a bit more than halfway through this book. At 530 pages it is not a light summer read. It is, however, a beautifully written book and one that lots of people ought to be required to read - particularly California politicians. It’s the story of water, the California land grab, politics, agriculture in the arid West, greed, and ingenuity.
em_reads_books's review against another edition
4.0
To get my one complaint out of the way: this book needed more maps! There's one basic one at the beginning, but the author references many different geographies than are labeled on it, and in different levels of detail. Especially as a non-Californian, I very much wanted a little more illustration of exactly what kinds of places I was dealing with in each chapter.
A fascinating read overall - natural and man-made history, California mythology and myth-busting in all its contradictions. I love these stories of the massive human ingenuity it took to colonize and engineer such a vast ecosystem and turn its natural flood/drought cycles to something amenable to industrial-scale agriculture, told with the understanding that ingenuity does not equal wisdom. And told with empathy for people - not just the farmers and laborers on the land, but a whole state and country that rely on these water systems and agricultural production - who have now worked ourselves into an impossible situation. Raises important questions of what makes something a public versus private resource and how to approach an increasingly complicated and existential challenge.
A fascinating read overall - natural and man-made history, California mythology and myth-busting in all its contradictions. I love these stories of the massive human ingenuity it took to colonize and engineer such a vast ecosystem and turn its natural flood/drought cycles to something amenable to industrial-scale agriculture, told with the understanding that ingenuity does not equal wisdom. And told with empathy for people - not just the farmers and laborers on the land, but a whole state and country that rely on these water systems and agricultural production - who have now worked ourselves into an impossible situation. Raises important questions of what makes something a public versus private resource and how to approach an increasingly complicated and existential challenge.
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